Fighting Wings
by Arashi21
Summary: Where light exists, so must darkness. What happens when the hunter learns the truth about the hunted? This is basically a story about what my OC Kestrel is doing during RGZ Archer's Winds of Change story. Rated T for violence and humor.
1. Chapter 1: Trudging Through the Ashes

Fighting Wings

Ch 1: Trudging Through the Ashes

Disclaimer: I do not own Storm Hawks: They are owned by Nerd Corps Entertainment and Asaph "Ace" Fipke.

"Well, scratch another one..."

Kestrel let out a frustrated sigh as she scratched through the name of yet another hospital on the list for what seemed like the thousandth time.

"Geez! I must've gone to every hospital in the Atmos by now," she said as she looked at the list once again. An assortment of names of several known hospitals across the known Atmos was now mostly scratched out. Kestrel briefly skimmed the crossed-out names one more time. Then when she was sure there was nothing left, the angrily folded the piece of paper several times and stuffed it into her right pocket.

"_This doesn't make any sense,"_ she thought. _"If he doesn't get treatment in any of the general hospitals, then where does he go?"_

The "he" that she was referring to was her latest quarry. Kestrel was a bounty hunter, among other things, though she preferred the term "freelancer." She was a person of many talents, and many jobs. And while some of them were simple jobs like scouting territories or delivering messages to people across Atmos, there were others that were much more dangerous, such as spying on Cyclonian airspace or rescuing Atmosian supplies and prisoners from the hands of rogue factions.

This latest job however, Kestrel could only describe with one word:

Infuriating…

When she first accepted the job of course, it seemed like it would the biggest score ever.

Only a week ago, the Sky Knight Council sent her a messenger crystal that actually summoned her to their chambers. That immediately sparked her suspicion, as the Council had typically detailed jobs to her in the crystal itself. Still, she accepted their proposal and flew off to Terra Atmosia to meet with them.

It was then, that she received news she almost never thought possible…

"_You no doubt know why we asked you to be here personally, yes?" _

_Kestrel looked around the Council chamber for a moment before answering_

"_Um…what do you mean 'we'? You're… kinda the only one here,"_

_Indeed, only one member of the Sky Knight Council was present in the chamber at the time, the Council's Archivist, Kestrel never bothered to remember their names._

"_Hmm, yes that is correct." Said the Councilman as he titled his glasses up. "The other Council members have…more pressing matters to attend to, but I can assure you that I speak on behalf of the entire council when I offer you this assignment."_

_Kestrel crossed her arms, "Or, _you_ personally had a job for me and you didn't want the other council members to know about it, so you asked me here personally instead of sending me the information in a messenger crystal knowing that it would be screened before it left Atmosia."_

_The old man narrowed his eyes and the young girl for a moment, and then a small smile began to spread across his face "Very good," he replied. "But I'm afraid you're only half right. As I said, the decision to renew the bounty on this particular individual _was _unanimously decided upon by the Council, though, because the previous bounty has expired, the Council itself cannot renew it. However this does not extend to _individual _members of the council." _

_The old man then leaned forward. "And of course, we don't want this information to leave Terra Atmosia, due to the possibility that this individual could receive warning from his …allies within the free Atmos."_

"_Tch! For you old coots to go through all this trouble, this must be one hot contract," said Kestrel._

_The Councilman blinked, apparently taken aback by Kestrel's impudence, but cleared his throat and continued._

"_Indeed. Also you may be familiar with this one."_

_Kestrel raised her eyebrows. "That so? I'm not exactly _familiar_ with too many people you know."_

_The old man grinned. "Be that as it may, I find it unlikely you would forget a former bounty, particularly…the _only _one that ever escaped."_

_Kestrel's eyes widened._

_The Councilman looked down at his registry. "The Sky Knight Council has unanimously decided to approve the renewal of the bounty placed on-"_

"_Chaz Ri Kai__…" Kestrel finished with a solemn tone _

"_Correct."_

_Kestrel allowed a small laugh to escape; it had been four years since she had last seen Kai. She had been hunting him all across the Atmos until she just happened to run into him once. She had almost caught him, but she hadn't counted on Kai's…unusual powers. Then he managed to escape…_

…_on _her _prototype skimmer._

_Kestrel continued to hunt for Kai, but eventually his trail went cold_

_That, coupled with… personal troubles that occurred shortly after, officially ended her hunt for Kai, and over time, his bounty expired. _

_Until now, it seemed._

_But, there was thing that she didn't get…_

"_Why exactly do you want to renew the bounty in the first place?" she asked the councilman. "Especially after all this time. Oh, and don't give me any of that 'need-to-know basis' crap. I asked you, so you'd better tell me."_

"_Oh, I wouldn't dream of keeping this information from you." The councilman said in a tone that sounded vaguely condescending. "The truth is, Kai has become something of a…liability, if you will. Given his association with Murk Raiders-"_

"_Murk Raiders?" asked Kestrel, "You serious?"_

_The Old man nodded _

_Then she started laughing. "So he's a pirate now? Oh that's just beautiful!"_

"_Quite," the old man replied, clearing his throat. "As I said, his association with the Murk Raiders has made him a liability to the Council and a potential threat to Atmos. So far he seems to only appear with them during attacks on Cyclonian targets, or so our information suggests, but if that is true we are uncertain how long this behavior will continue. _

_The Archivist tilted his glasses up once again and looked back down at his rather large book. "Therefore, the Sky Knight Council hereby commissions you to guarantee either his capture or elimination-"_

"_I don't do 'elimination' in case you forgot." Kestrel interrupted, glaring at the old man._

"_Yes, we are well aware," the Archivist replied. "The Council would prefer that he be taken alive as well, but eliminating him as a threat takes priority, as a result the means are irrelevant."_

_Kestrel cocked her head to the side slightly and raised one eyebrow at the old man. "There's something you're not telling me, isn't there?"_

_The old man didn't reply, but instead threw a piece of rolled-up parchment towards Kestrel. The easily caught it and examined its exterior briefly before turning back to the councilman. "What's this?"_

"_The information on our payment for Kai of course," He replied. "Let's just call it an 'incentive'"_

_Kestrel looked back down at the scroll in her hand and slowly opened it._

_Her eyes almost popped out of her head._

_The reward was ten, no TWENTY times more than it had been previously! The sight of all the zeroes on the paper caught her off guard so much that as she tried to speak, only choking sounds would escape from her mouth._

_During all this a large grin of satisfaction moved across the old Archivist's face. "So, I take it we have a deal then?"_

_Kestrel forgot about all her suspicions, all her questions about the contract, and without even taking her eyes off of the paper, nodded slowly._

And here she was now, starting to regret ever taking the job in the first place.

The Council's Archivist gave her one last bit of information before she left: Kai had apparently been undertaking the missions meant for a Sky Knight and had received numerous injuries, including open wounds and broken bones. That was what led her to search every hospital in the Atmos, but none of them had ever kept records of Kai being a patient.

Once again, her hunt for Kai was at a dead end…

Kestrel was already flying back home when suddenly, suspicions she had so readily forgotten about before, began to resurface.

The first time she was sent to go after Kai, he was simply a fugitive, she didn't ask about the details back then, she was still new to the profession, she was just told that he was a criminal on the run. Now the Council considered him a "liability." It almost sounded as if they were using him for some unknown purpose. And now he had outlived his usefulness. Plus the almost ridiculous reward meant they were desperate to either capture or kill him.

"Why is he so important all of a sudden?" she asked herself. It wasn't like she cared about what happened to Kai, he was a pirate after all. She just wondered what the Council's true motives were, why they would go through all this trouble to keep it a secret if Kai was nothing more than a pirate.

Her suspicions plagued her mind until Terra Amazonia, was clearly in sight. While the Terra was her home, she wasn't an Amazonian, nor did she live among them. They got along well enough and she even traded with them on occasion. Some were even hospitable enough to teach her a thing or two about some of their fighting styles. But neither she nor they considered her to be one of them. Instead she was more of a "permanent guest" on their terra. She didn't mind that setup as she preferred to stay out of the limelight.

Following her usual route above the terra's thick, luscious jungles and flying under and over its rocky overpasses she made her way to one of the terra's many waterfalls and flew toward it. As she was coming up on the column of water she jerked her skimmer to the right at the last minute and made for an opening to the side that lead past the water, turning her skimmer on its side she flew into the opening and made it past the waterfall without so much as a drop on her skimmer. She then returned the skimmer to its normal flight position and landed it on a strip of land in the cave. Of course, this long cave behind the waterfall was not naturally formed this way. Kestrel had always speculated that the Amazonians dug it out and used it in the distant past. Either way, it made a prefect spot for her to be secluded from the world around her.

As her skimmer slowed to a stop she got out near what to the untrained eye looked like a pile of well-stacked wreckage and scrap metal.

This was her home.

It was mostly constructed painstakingly from wrecked carriers and spare parts from skimmers and carriers of criminals she had captured. It took a long time, but eventually this makeshift home provided almost all of the base necessities for a normal home, even indoor plumbing!

Naturally though, she hadn't done all the work alone…

Kestrel walked up to the door, which had once been part of the crewman's quarters of a carrier, and the still operational door slid open automatically. The inside was impressive as well. Though some of the walls had the telltale sign of their age and condition, such as rust, adorned upon some of their surfaces, the place looked very hospitable; several working lights illuminated the whole area, giving the walls a glowing red color as the light reflected off their surfaces. The makeshift house, while small, had all the amenities that most homes would have, such as a kitchen, bathrooms, and two bedrooms. This home also extended further into the cave walls, adding more to the already impressive home.

However, the first thing she noticed when she came through the door was the sofa and the pile of blankets stacked on top of it. As soon as she stepped in the blankets began to move until a young man's face emerged from them.

It was the face of her partner, and her best and only _real_ friend in the Atmos.

"Glad to see you're finally awake Gyr," she said sarcastically. "Hope you don't start getting lazy on me."

"Hello to you too," Gyr replied with a smile. He pushed the blankets back and sat on the couch. "So, what did the Council tell you Scout?"

Kestrel smiled back. "Scout" was Gyr's nickname for her. He had called her that since they were kids. She had asked him about why he called her that several times before, and he always replied that the nickname "seemed to fit," and never elaborated on it further. But if he remembered it, that meant his memories were beginning to come back.

"Well they gave me a job that just may be exactly what I need to finish our little project!"

"Really?" Gyr asked, but then he began to scratch his head. "Uh…what was that 'project' again?"

Kestrel sighed. "I guess your memory hasn't completely returned yet."

"Guess not." Gyr replied, still holding his head

"Well you know it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't used your powers like that." Kestrel said. "Every time you go overboard like that you lose your memory."

"It's not exactly easy to control," was Gyr's reply. "Besides, you were in danger, what was I supposed to-"

"Oh for Aurora's sake, stop trying to act like a Sky Knight-in-Shining-Armor all the time!" Kestrel snapped. "You don't need to keep trying to protect me every time he shows up. Next time I'll handle him myself."

"You really think you can?" said Gyr. His voice was calm but he was glaring with annoyance at the very least "You can't control your abilities any better than me! Last time he showed up he nearly killed you, you expect me to just let him?"

"He's not going to kill me Gyr, even if he was capable. He's still my brother."

"Kess, we don't know why he's hunting you. We don't know what's going on in his head! Right now we're just lucky he hasn't figured out where we live yet, we…"

Gyr's words were cut off as he grabbed his head in pain. Kestrel was about to rush to help him when he held up his hand.

"I'm fine," he said breathing somewhat heavily. "The pain's already going away."

Kestrel shook her head and took a seat next to him. "See? This is what I mean! You're just hurting yourself like this. Hiero is going to come back for me either way; you can't drive him off forever. Eventually he's going to find me when you aren't around and I'll need to fend him off myself..."

Kestrel was about to continue, but her pride suddenly stopped her. Her words seemed to be caught in the back of her throat. She turned away from her friend and finally found the words again. "I just…I don't wanna keep putting you through this whole ordeal over and over again, especially since it won't stop my brother in the long run."

"I know," Gyr replied, "But don't think that I'm gonna just sit back if he shows up again."

Kestrel smiled. "Yeah I know. But at least learn how to control your powers better. No more chronic amnesia ok?"

Gyr chuckled slightly. "Sure, I'll get right on that."

The two were silent for a moment, but then Gyr decided to break the ice once more.

"So you gonna tell me about the job the Council sent you on or not?" He asked.

Kestrel remained silent for a moment, and then reached in her right pocket and pulled out the folded list. "You remember Kai?"

Gyr thought for a minute. "Sort of, he was a bounty from along time ago right? I don't remember ever seeing him or anything though."

"Be glad you didn't," said Kestrel. "That was a particularly humiliating day…"

Both of them chuckled slightly before speaking again.

"So what about him?"

Kestrel relayed the information given to her by the Council's Archivist and her expedition to every hospital in Atmos, only to find nothing.

"So now the trail's cold again huh?" asked Gyr.

"Seems that way right now," Kestrel replied as she opened the list and showed Gyr the scratched out names. "I've been to all of these hospitals and no sign of him, nor was their any record of him ever checking in to any of them. But I must've been to every single one in the Atmos! This whole thing doesn't make any sense!"

Gyr looked at the list and skimmed down the names of the hospitals. It took some time for him to read through the pencil scratches of each crossed out hospital but his eyes eventually stopped at an uncrossed one at the bottom of the list.

"Wait, what about this one?" he said as he pointed to it. Kestrel brought her face closer to the map to see where Gyr was pointing, until her eyes met the name he had found.

"You've gotta be kidding me right?" she said, and then she pointed at the name. "That's Terra Pathologica: the terra of _Diseases_."

"So?"

"The Council's information said Kai was seen with open wounds on numerous occasions. It would be almost suicidal for him to go to a hospital on a terra where most of the deadliest diseases in the Atmos are in the same place!"

"Well it's the only place you haven't gone to yet, it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot I suppose."

"Yeah I guess, but-"

Kestrel was interrupted by a loud beeping noise coming from the other side of the house.

"Oh yeah, that darn thing was going since you were gone." Said Gyr. "I didn't know what it was so I put it under those-"

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THAT EARLIER?!" Kestrel shouted as she ran towards the sound.

"W-why?" asked Gyr shocked by her sudden outburst. "What is it anyway?"

"That's the homing beacon for my skimmer! The skimmer Kai STOLE from me four years ago!" she said as she pulled the towels and sheets off of the table where the sound came from. Soon she pulled out a small circular device with a black screen on it. She looked at the apparently lifeless device and let out a frustrated grunt.

"Well that's just great!" she growled. "It's dead, that beeping must have been for a low battery. How long was this thing going off for anyway?"

"I told you it was going off for days!" said Gyr "It was driving me crazy! Why do you think I put it under all those sheets?"

"Don't you know what this means?" she exclaimed. "Kai must've used my skimmer recently. But now I'll probably never know where he went with…wait." She turned back to Gyr. "When was the last time you heard it go off?"

Gyr shrugged his shoulders "I dunno. Ten…fifteen minutes ago maybe?

"Ok good, then I still might be able to catch him." Kestrel hurriedly grabbed her equipment and weapons from the table and moved toward the door when Gyr spoke up.

"How are you going to find him if you have no idea where he went?"

Kestrel turned back to Gyr. "I have a lead, remember? Terra Pathologica. I'll fly in that direction and use falconsight to pinpoint where he went. If he was using my skimmer in that area within a few hours or so, I'll be able to find him."

"Need some help?" Gyr asked and was about to get up until Kestrel stopped him.

"No it's ok, you still need to rest." She replied as the door opened. She turned back to Gyr and grinned "Don't worry, I'll find him and be back with that huge reward by tomorrow!"

Gyr returned her smile. "Good hunting Scout!" Kestrel returned his wish of luck with a nod just as the door closed.

Gyr began to lay on the couch again when something suddenly came back to him. He looked back at the table and noticed a crystal recharging device laying there. Then another memory came to him…

"Well…" he said "That's not good…"

Starting at a run from her porch, Kestrel leapt up to the flag pole hanging outside her house and swung from it, landing right in her skimmer, like she always did when she was going out in a good mood. In an instant she was off flying past the opening in the waterfall and rising up to meet the sunset as it peaked over the top of the dense jungles of the terra. She allowed herself to soak in the exhilaration that flying gave her. Even though she'd flown countless times before, each time the wind in her face and the smooth feeling of weightlessness in the air was exuberating, even if only for a moment. Once she had flown far enough away from Terra Amazonia she regained her focus on the task at hand:

Capturing the only one that got away…

"This time Kai, you won't be so lucky," Kestrel said with a vicious grin spreading across her face. "Thing's have changed since we last met, you won't have the advantage this time around."

A/N: OK! That was my shot at writing something about an OC I made up three months ago and having not written anything in over a year, so I'm probably a little rusty with my writing style right now, but don't worry, it will get better. In the meantime, if anyone has any feedback and helpful hints they'd like to give me I'd appreciate them.

And don't worry TDT 15 is coming! Archer is working very hard on it, but work is apparently slowing him down or something. In the meantime go check out his other stories on his profile RGZ Archer. This story is kind of parallel with Archer's story Winds of Change (both volumes) so if you are confused by what's going on in my story go read that Gathering Storm and Distant Thunder (the two volumes to WoC) on his profile. Anyway, hope you enjoyed it and more stories on my OC to come (hopefully).

Laterz!


	2. Chapter 2: The Trail of Glass

Ch2: The Trail of Glass

Disclaimer: I do not own Storm Hawks: They are owned by Nerd Corps Entertainment and Asaph "Ace" Fipke. And of course, as you all know, I do, in fact, own Kestrel, Gyr, Heiro, and this story…so there you go.

"Ugh…what time is it?"

Kestrel sluggishly woke up, still on her skimmer and still following the path she had laid out since the beginning.

Or at least, that's what she hoped…

Kestrel jumped slightly upon waking to a skimmer in flight, and the skimmer shook slightly until she regained her balance. Thankfully, she had remembered to put the vehicle on auto-pilot before…nodding off. Not that anyone could blame her since all she had done after leaving her home on Terra Amazonia was fly towards

Terra Pathologica. She hadn't slept since she left and she had already gone through her protein bars halfway into the trip. The only time she stopped to eat anything was at the Wayside, but the only thing she had there was a chocolate shake…

"Stupid withdrawal symptoms," she said to herself.

Rubbing the drowsiness from her eyes, she surveyed her environment. It was pretty much the same as it had been before she fell asleep; an almost endless expanse of sky with the mass of clouds moving below her. One thing she did notice were a few small, barren terras around. She could only guess she was still a good distance from Pathologica itself, but fortunately one thing that was noticeable was the area's climate, which was much warmer than usual. This had to mean that she was further into Atmos' equatorial zone. Either that or she had gone off course and flown into an uncharted, arid area and was lost.

It was safe to assume she preferred the former over the latter.

"Well," she said, "If I'm where I hope I am this should help me find Kai's location."

Kestrel closed her eyes in concentration, focusing her psychic energy on her intention as she had learnt in her training years ago. When she felt that she had focused enough of her energy, she concentrated it into her eyes. She felt the energy wrap around them and it gave them a slight tingling sensation. She felt the psychic power welling up in her eyes until she could no longer feel it flowing.

Then she opened them.

Kestrel's eyes were no longer brown, now they were a hue of bluish-green. What Kestrel was seeing _though_ these eyes however, was much different. She was seeing what had been before her earlier, but this time everything looked somewhat different. She could see the sun's light reflecting off of the surfaces of the terra's in a different spectrum. And she could see what looked like streams of tiny lights, each stream a different color, crisscrossing in the sky.

This was her Falconsight.

Using this ability, Kestrel could see in a spectrum of light that most others could not. Her eyesight went into the near ultraviolet and allowed her to see things that normal eyes would miss. In a way it was like having a black-light in her eyes, but it was more effective. The streams of light particles she could now see in the sky were actually streams of residual crystal energy from skimmers and carriers. Each skimmer and carrier type used certain types of crystals for power and when the engines were used these crystallic energy signatures would exude from the engines and remain in the air for days before eventually dissipating as the particles weaken and spread too far from each other. When in close concentration to one another however, these energy signatures could produce an "energy wake," similar to a wake on the surface of water after an object moves through it. These wakes in turn act like a glowing bread crumb trail for the carriers and skimmers that emitted them.

Of course there were drawbacks to being able to detect these energy wakes. While Kestrel could determine what vehicle created the wake, many wakes were similar due to conventional engine crystals being used for most ships. She could tell the difference between the energy wakes from carriers and skimmers based on their signature as well as the size of the wake, but as to what class of carrier or what model of skimmer, she had to make a lot more guesswork. Normally using Falconsight in this way would only be good for pursing a target that she was directly chasing, and then she could memorize the look of the wake and follow it in the event the target would try and lose her. In situations like this is would almost be useless.

In this particular situation however, there was another factor: the unique skimmer that Kai was using.

Kestrel had invented the skimmer herself, and designed it to utilize a great amount of speed. To do this however, put a great deal of stress on the skimmer's internal components. As a result she had to use a properly refined frost crystal to place in the skimmer as well to act as a coolant to protect the vehicle's engine. So naturally, that crystal's energy signature would be present within the skimmer's normal energy wake. Knowing Kai, even if he had done something to the skimmer, there was no way he would trade in the vehicle's speed just to avoid buying a special frost crystal, especially since he was oftentimes on the run.

Of course, Kestrel was putting a lot of hope into the idea that Kai was actually _using_ her skimmer…

Slowly Kestrel surveyed her surroundings hoping to spot the unique energy wake she was looking for. She saw several wakes in the area, not many since people apparently didn't travel this area much, but none of them seemed to stand out.

"Come on…" she said, scanning and rescanning the air around her, she saw a few carrier wakes and a few skimmers, but she assumed that most of them were old since only a few of them seemed to glow brighter than the others. And of course, none of them matched the energy signature she was looking for.

"Grr…this can't be right," she said, "I can't have hit another dead end again!"

Kestrel sighed in defeat; so certain that she had finally closed in on Kai, only for the trail to turn cold once again.

"Great, I came out all this way and nearly starved myself for nothing…" she sighed once again and began to prepare for the return trip. She turned to the skimmer's side and went to retrieve a bottle of water from her bag.

That was when she saw it.

Something she had not bothered to look at before, a faint energy wake was far to her left. It was so far away it was no question why she had missed it before, but despite its faded color she could tell it was different from the others.

As soon as she got her hands back on her skimmer's controls she revved its engines and slammed on the accelerator. The skimmer thrust forward and then turned sharply in the direction of the wake. Kestrel's heart began to race; this was the last chance she had to find him for most likely a long time.

Now it was all or nothing.

As she raced towards the wake, the colors became slightly more pronounced, she could easily see the yellow in the stream, but that could come from several models. There was only one way to prove it was the energy signature she was looking for. As she flew closer the looked more intently into the stream her eyes and mind fixated on one goal: to find the right color among the yellow energy.

Then there it was.

Blue crystal energy, intermingled with the yellow. They were sparse, but they were in the stream. This had to be it; the odds were too great that a similar skimmer with a similar wake pattern could even exist, much less have been in this area. This must have been it!

The wake was clearly beginning to fade so it had to have been several days old, but it still trailed from the opposite direction a good ways before dissipating so it couldn't have been more than three or four. If Kai had flown in this area four days ago, odds were that he couldn't have gotten far

"Got you this time Kai," she said grinning with satisfaction. Kestrel then revved her skimmer and took off, following the trail of crystal energy.

Unfortunately, it turned out the wake trail was a lot further than she thought, she could see it stretch on for miles and extend beyond her vision. As she continued to follow the wake however, it became more and more defined, which meant that she was getting closer to wherever her skimmer was.

Suddenly Kestrel started to feel dizzy. She held her head for a moment, unsure why she felt so lightheaded, but it didn't take her long to figure it out.

Even though she was using it to follow the energy wake, she hadn't realized she was still using her falconsight. Though useful, falconsight couldn't be used indefinitely. Use of it put strain on her eyes and her mind. Fortunately she had been using very little energy to see the energy wakes, but the prolonged use of it was beginning to take its toll. Immediately Kestrel deactivated it, in case she needed to use it again later. Unfortunately that meant she could no longer see the energy trail.

"I guess it's Pathologica after all," she said. She knew the trail went straight for miles. She could only guess that if she continued straight it would lead to Pathologica, but if Kai had turned, then the Terra was in fact in another direction, which meant she would be lost.

Once again, it seemed Kestrel would have to rely on luck.

"Oh great," she said looking at the setting sun off in the distance. "It's almost nightfall and I still don't see any terra that resembles Pathologica out here." If she got close to her destination at night, the she would have no choice but to land on Pathologica, even if Kai wasn't there. She wasn't concerned about the diseases since she couldn't get sick, or at least couldn't stay sick long enough for it to affect her. But the idea of being forced to camp on a disease-ridden terra for the night made her skin crawl all the same.

It seemed crazy that Kai would come here to get treatment, especially if the information was right and he had previously had open wounds. The only reason he would risk himself like that was if he was so desperate not to be caught that he would go to a terra out of the way of most of the free Atmos, even if it meant he'd risk being infected by a deadly disease.

Whatever Kai was doing, he definitely didn't want the Council to know about it.

Suddenly a creeping feeling shot up Kestrel's spine, her training had taught her to know when trouble was coming, or if it was already there. This feeling was the same as someone looking over her shoulder. That kind of feeling only meant one thing:

She had been followed.

Suddenly, Kestrel felt her skimmer shake violently. It felt as thought something had hit it. She looked to her right and saw that one of her wings had a scorch mark on it. It had been hit with crystal fire. Not long after more bolts of crystal energy emerged from behind her, several shots flew past her as she began to take evasive action, too distracted by the salvo of energy blasts to look behind her.

"You've got to be kidding me!" she exclaimed with annoyance. "Who the heck are these guys?!"

She heard another shot make contact, this time somewhere under the skimmer. She tried to maneuver, but the steering was sluggish and unresponsive. They must have hit something sensitive. Kestrel still had minimal control of the skimmer and maneuvered in downward. She looked down and saw another barren terra down below. It was pretty small but given the present circumstances she had little choice. Putting as much power on the engine as she thought it could handle, Kestrel flew her skimmer to the terra. Naturally, the crystal blasts continued to rain down on her, but she had pulled too far ahead for them to be any real threat.

"_They must be firing them from their own weapons rather than from guns on their skimmers," _she thought. Hopefully that meant they would then come off their skimmers once she landed.

Again, she was putting faith in luck…

Her skimmer's landing was rocky, but stable nonetheless as her skimmer connected with the terra's dry, dusty surface. Once the skimmer slowed to a stop, she noticed the crystal blasts had stopped as well. Making sure to grab her weapons Kestrel hopped off her skimmer to see who it was that had fired at her.

Kestrel saw what looked like a dozen skimmers coming down to the terra. Kestrel immediately recognized them as Talon Switchblades, except for one of them, which was a model she didn't know right off hand.

"Cyclonians? What are they doing out here?"

It didn't take them too long to land in a single file row several yards in front of her. The first twelve switchblades were in front, each of their pilots wearing the distinguishable talon combat armor. Following standard formations, they each hopped off of their skimmers and brandished their weapons. Some had small crystal powered swords others had staves. Slowly the talons moved towards Kestrel and began to surround her. They stayed a few feet away from her, most likely so they wouldn't run into each other if they tried to attack all at once.

Which they often did…

Kestrel kept her hands to her side but didn't reach for her tonfa; she didn't want to spark a mad rush just yet.

"Well well, what do we have here?" another voice spoke up from behind them, one that sounded vaguely familiar to her. Then two talons directly in front of her moved aside and a lone figure moved past them to face her.

The man facing her was certainly not who she expected

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Kestrel said with a laugh.

The one standing before her…was a man by the name of Domiwick.

"Unless the idea of being surrounded by a dozen talons amuses you, I don't think you have anything to be laughing about right now," said Domiwick.

"Yeah right Domiwick! you could surround me with a hundred talons and it would still be hilarious!" Kestrel broke out laughing again. "For a minute I thought you idiots were actually a threat!"

"You can continue to test my patience," replied Domiwick, "Or you can tell me where Kai is. We know he passed through this area sometime ago. Now where is he?"

"Hey! Back off action hero wannabe! That bounty's mine!" Kestrel snapped. "Not like a traitor like you could claim it anyway!"

"Oh please," said Domiwick, rolling his eyes. "I have no interest in that meager price on his head. This is a personal mission I am on, that little thief stole something very important from me, and I want it back!"

"Oh wow! Kai, a _pirate,_ stole something from you? Who could've seen that coming?" Kestrel replied mockingly.

"Silence!" Domiwick shouted. "Just tell me where he is hiding and you won't get hurt!"

Kestrel snickered. "First of all, you guys hurt me? That's rich. Second of all, what delusions are you operating under that would make you believe for one second that I would tell you where he is?"

Domiwick sighed with frustration. "Fine, then we'll just have to force you to tell us."

"_Wow, hook line and sinker! This guy takes the bait way to easily!"_ Kestrel thought as she reached for her weapons.

"You!" Domiwick shouted to one of the Talons. The talon closest on his right responded.

"Shut her up."

"_Tch! Just ONE?! For some famous explorer or whatever, he's obviously not very observant… or intelligent."_

The talon stepped forward a few feet, but stopped for a moment. He stood in attack position, but didn't move. He looked as if he was observing Kestrel, trying to spot for weaknesses.

Kestrel simply thought he looked afraid.

"Well, what're you waiting for?" she asked the talon. "I thought a man was supposed to lead during a dance. So hurry up and lead!"

The talon stood there for a few more seconds, but then suddenly seemed to swallow some courage and charged, shouting a war cry as he went. Kestrel smiled as the talon drew closer, but didn't change her relaxed stance. The talon stopped just two feet in front of her and thrust his weapon at her throat.

Kestrel had already moved up her right hand as pushed the talons arm to the left as the craned her neck to the right slightly to avoid the blade. Then she swing her left shoulder back followed by her left leg, eventually spinning her whole body around while pivoting on her right leg. As she turned she lifted her leg up and swung it around until it made contact with the talon's head. The attack was so fast that the momentum sent the unfortunate talon sailing slightly to the left before he dropped to the ground like a brick several feet to the left of Kestrel. She then brought her leg back to the ground and faced Domiwick and the remaining talons at his side.

"Then again," she said. "This is a contemporary society right? I'm sure you won't have a problem if I lead from now on." She grinned wickedly and brought her arms to her sides and revved the handles on her tonfa twice. As she did, yellow crystal energy burst forth from them and illuminated the weapons. She then brought them to a standard guard position as she took her stance.

Domiwick growled with aggravation and pointed at Kestrel with a commanding gesture

"GET HER!"

The talons charged at her in unison, each shouting their own war cries. Kestrel remained confident, despite the fact that she knew she couldn't handle eleven talons on her own. She could probably take on as many as six or seven talons by herself if the conditions were right, but she could never keep track of eleven of them.

At least, not without a little help.

Kestrel relaxed and began to focus her energy into her mind. Using this technique was risky, since she had used up a good amount of energy from following Kai's wake trail, but she figured she would be able to hold it together long enough to fight a bunch of stock villains like talons. Either way, she really had no choice now.

It was time to use the second stage of her falconsight.

Falconsight had two functions for Kestrel: the first was for tracking and for seeing things that the normal human eye couldn't see. The second function was by far her most powerful. It allowed her to dramatically increase her brain activity and greatly augment her reflexes as well as her speed of thought. It also had the benefit of increasing her coordination, making her movements twice as fast as normal it was her ultimate fighting enhancement. The drawback to this ability was that it took much more energy than the previous stage and she still hadn't completely recovered from using the first stage for so long.

"I'd say I can hold it for about 20 seconds," she said to herself, keeping her eyes closed as she heard the talons charging. She then opened them, her once brown eyes now bluish-green once again.

"That's 10 more than I need."

She could see the world around her differently once again. This time, everything seemed to slow down. The approaching talons seemed to be moving in slow motion. In reality her brain was working so quickly and processing data at such a rapid rate, her reflexes were almost five times as fast. It allowed her to see every detail in their movement and plan accordingly. She even saw Domiwick in the back, grinning with satisfaction and looking as confident as ever.

For Kestrel, it was time to shock him out of his stupidity.

The first talon brought his staff up and attempted to slam it down on Kestrel's head, but she was already on the move as soon as he raised it. She moved toward him in what seemed like the blink of an eye and hit him with a tonfa short end strike to his torso. The attack knocked him into his comrades behind him and knocked several of them over like bowling pins.

That was the power of Kestrel's crystal tonfas. Contained within them were high level yellow impact crystals. These rare and unique crystals had the ability to increase the force and momentum an object exudes when it strikes another object. They also had the ability to resist almost any force that struck them and release that energy outward, allowing the wielder to easily parry an attacker. This made the crystals the perfect blunt weapon enhancement.

This was the weapon of choice for Kestrel for many reasons, namely because brute strength was not her greatest area. Kestrel was not physically weak, but her fighting style was simply not based on strength, so fighting against a huge opponent who used mainly brute force, such as Snipe, would leave her at somewhat of a disadvantage. Her weapons allowed her to make up for her lack of physical strength by adding additional force to her strikes.

Of course, there was a limit to how much power the wielder can use when fighting with these crystals in their weapons. Too much power could potentially cause the weapons to fly out of the user's hand, potentially breaking or damaging something. In worse case scenarios a person could break their wrists or arms if they exerted too much force or even strike themselves or someone else with too much force and cause death. Fortunately Kestrel had them set on the lowest setting, which caused her strikes to exert only twice as much force as normal.

But still, the effect was impressive.

The first Talon didn't get back up again, the blow had obviously knocked the wind out of him and he lay unconscious. Those he had knocked over however, picked themselves back up. There were five of them who hadn't been knocked down at all, so Kestrel focused her attention on them. She brought one of her tonfa up to her neck and prepared to charge at the group, and then suddenly she noticed the yellow light beginning to flicker.

"What the-?" she said as she looked at her other tonfa. It too was flickering.

"Don't tell me…" the yellow lights flickered for a few more seconds before finally fading away. She tried to rev them back up again, but there was no response.

"Great! I forgot to recharge them before I left… again!"

This didn't go unnoticed to the remaining ten talons who took the opportunity to charge wildly for Kestrel.

"Well that sucks," she muttered to herself, but the emotions going through her head were more along the lines of annoyance than fear. True she had lost one advantage, but she still had the use of her falconsight, not to mention her elite martial arts training.

It also meant she no longer had to hold her strikes back.

All of the talons tried to attack at once, the remaining two with staves lead the charge. The first used a side strike, but Kestrel easily blocked it with her tonfa. While no longer crystal powered, her tonfa were still effective weapons. She used the block to move in closer to the talon and use a low sweeping kick to take his legs out. As he fell another Talon emerged from behind, attempting to stab her with his crystal blade.

Fortunately, Kestrel was already underneath the attack and used her advantage to grab the talon by the wrist to apply pressure to it and force him to drop his sword. She then stood up and spun around, using the leverage of the talon's arm to throw him over her shoulder, using his body to block an incoming staff strike from behind.

The offending talon was stunned and tried to attack again, but Kestrel was already prepared and arched her back to avoid it. She then used the one second when the talon was bringing his staff back to hit him in the chin with the short end of her tonfa, sending the talon reeling back from the pain. She took this time to spun around and narrowly avoid being slashed by another talon's sword. She managed to sidestep it just in time and retaliate by chopping the talon in the neck, immediately sending him to the ground. She then spun around once again and swung her tonfa at the previous talon, who had attempted to counterattack, and sent him spinning to the ground.

Domiwick watched all of this with shock. Her movements were flawless; it was as if she knew exactly where all of the talons were and how to counter them in the span of less than a second. True, talons were poorly trained and their attacks were sloppy and at best mediocre, but in greater numbers, even talons were a threat.

To see one person take on a dozen talons and defeat so many of them without so much as a scratch, such a thing didn't seem possible…

Domiwick knew he had to improvise if he wanted to get out of this.

Reaching into one of his pockets, Domiwick pulled out a bag filled with violet colored stones. "I may have to hit all of the talons with them, but these paralyzer crystals should make her much easier to capture."

Domiwick wasted no time in throwing the entire bag of crystals out into the fight. Kestrel was distracted by the five remaining talons, but managed to see the crystal as it was flying through the air. Thinking fast, she jumped up and used a talon's face as a springboard. She propelled off of the stunned talon and flipped backwards in the air to propel herself away. She managed to see several bursts of violet light just before she landed. When the smoke cleared all of the talons were now lying motionless on the ground.

And one flabbergasted Domiwick on the other side of them.

Kestrel grinned wickedly and began to walk towards him, spinning her tonfa as she walked. "Look honey, the kids are asleep and we have the whole place to ourselves." She said with a mocking tone. "Looks like we get to have some 'quality time.'"

Domiwick was at a loss now. He was all alone against someone who was able to fend off a dozen talons on her own. Domiwick was a good fighter, but something told him that this girl was something else, an anomaly. Worst of all, he had a feeling in his gut that there was still more to her than she had shown.

Growling with rage, Domiwick made a break for his skimmer and revved it to life as soon as he got on.

"This is not over!" He shouted as he took off from the small terra and back into the skies.

"Heh, like I haven't heard _that _one before." Kestrel said as she watched him fly away. She then turned around to walk back to her own skimmer.

Suddenly, Kestrel fell to her knees. She felt queasy and her head was spinning. Her vision became blurred and her mind was more or less a fog bank.

"Ugh…guess I overdid it, as usual." She said tiredly. "Definitely was a bad idea to use falconsight so much."

Kestrel took a moment to rest before attempting to repair her skimmer. Once she felt less lightheaded and could see more clearly, she managed to walk back over to her skimmer. She needed to leave fast before those paralysis stones wore off and those twelve talons got back up.

In her current state there was no way she could fight them.

The damage wasn't as bad as she thought. The damage was minimal and the steering that had given her trouble earlier was most likely the result of a jam in the system when the crystal blast hit that sensitive area earlier. At least, that's what she hoped. While Kestrel was almost a genius at making and building things, she was terrible when it came to repairing something. It was an odd trait for someone like her to have, but it existed.

"Well, that's good," she said after looking over her skimmer one more time. "Hopefully it'll hold up on the way there."

Kestrel knew that this hunt was going to be a lot harder than she had planned. Her weapons' crystals were out of juice and her falconsight was shot. If she ran into Kai it was not going to be easy to apprehend him in her state. She considered sleeping, which would fully rejuvenate her, but judging from the lifespan of the wake he left, she probably didn't have much time before he departed. This was her best chance to catch Kai, or at least find out where he was going."

Besides, Kestrel had one more trump card she could use. Something she didn't have last time that gave Kai the advantage before.

The perfect counter to Kai's unusual powers.

Kestrel noticed the sun was almost set and departed from the tiny terra, hoping that the talons didn't wake up in time to follow her. The last thing she wanted is someone else getting in the way of her hunt.

"Now to Pathologica…finally!" she said with a sigh as she flew off. "If this works out, I'll be one step closer to my dream. You won't be getting away this time, Kai!"

A/N: whew! Finally I finished this one. I hope my fight scene was good. I haven't done one in awhile so I wasn't quite sure if it came out right or not. I hope it did! lol

And for those of you who may be confused, Fighting Wings begins somewhere between chapter 14 and 15 of RGZ Archer's Winds of change. Basically it is set before chapter 15, which is where it begins to tie in with that story. As for updates, I start college again on Monday so updates may be slower that I'd hoped. I'll still try to get them in once a week, but that depends on how busy I am. I'm going to start on the next chapter on Sunday so I can at least have a headstart on it. Thanks for all the reviews and like last time if you have any comments, hints, spelling errors that need pointing out, please let me know!

Laterz!


	3. Chapter 3: The Paths Collide

Fighting Wings Ch3: The Paths Collide

A/N: Hey guys. I know this chapter is really late. But other than school, work, and laziness I have no excuse :P Ok here's the deal with this chapter: You all know that this story is a tie in to Wings of Change. Well this particular chapter is basically where that convergence begins. This chapter is basically chapter 15 of Winds of Change told through Kestrel's perspective. Therefore it won't be a complete retelling of that chapter, though it will have the same dialogue when appropriate. Instead, it will show what Kestrel was doing during the time Starling was learning about Kai's secret from Rondana.

Disclaimer: I do not own Storm Hawks: Said show is owned by Nerd Corps Entertainment and Asaph "Ace" Fipke. And of course, as you all know, I do in fact, own Kestrel, Gyr, Hiero, and this story…so there you go.

Many thanks go out to RGZ Archer for shamelessly advertising Fighting Wings on his own story Winds of Change, for free even. So go and read his story already! I know some of you TDT readers would like it. :D

Thanks also go out to MissDedodakes for giving me a detailed description of the terra and the hospital. In those kind of situations elaborating is a good thing :P

Rondana and Jim were created by MissDedodakes.

After many days and nights of flight, Terra Pathologica was now in plain view. Even though Kestrel guessed it was probably after midnight and if it weren't for the moon, she wouldn't be able to see the terra if she had crashed into it, she just had a feeling, or more of a desperate hope, that this was where Kai was hiding.

Though she couldn't see the terra completely in the dead of night, she could tell it was unlike most terras she had seen before; the tropical look of the terra was not something new to Kestrel, after all she lived on a tropical terra herself. What really made the terra different was the structure of the buildings. Unlike the more sophisticated designs of buildings on Atmos, the structures of these buildings seemed more…medieval.

"_This_ is where Kai goes for treatment?" Kestrel asked herself, puzzled. "Calling this place a 'backwater' would be the understatement of the century. I mean, what kind of treatment do they prescribe? bloodletting?" Kestrel couldn't help but laugh to herself as she imagined Kai with over a dozen leeches clinging to his body, painfully draining his blood from him and let out a sigh.

"If only…"

The pleasant notion of Kai in pain had Kestrel so distracted that she didn't realize that she almost flew over the terra before she returned to reality and slammed on her skimmer's brakes, leaving it to hover in the air. According to what little information she dug up on Pathologica before she departed, the terra was far from idyllic; while she didn't get too many details, she learned of the terra's clan based hierarchy and one clan in particular that made the most trouble. In situations like that, the people on Pathologica must have been paranoid about defense and security, and it was possible they had archers guarding the city's rooftops. Kestrel had never been part of any sky knight squadron so she couldn't fly any colors or sky knight emblems to show the terra's defenses that she wasn't a threat. Most likely they would think she was a scout for a raiding party and shoot her down on sight. If this terra had any crystal-based technology, particularly weapons, it would be even easier for them to damage her skimmer and worse; all the commotion would almost certainly alert Kai that something was wrong.

The first thing she had to worry about of course, was finding him.

Kestrel wasn't sure how populated this terra was, and Kai could be hiding anywhere from the cities to the jungles, or maybe even the mountains. The jungle was the least likely place since it seemed more likely to contract any of the number of fatal diseases, especially with the amount of wounds Kai dragged in every time he visited this terra. Not to mention the fact that there was some kind of insane clan that resided in the jungle. The terra's capital seemed to be the best place to look, but knowing Kai that seemed almost too easy. Kai typically hid in places no one would expect, sometimes even if it meant he would be put in harm's way. But apparently Kai was also not known for being too predictable with his methods. Even when Kestrel managed to find him four years ago it was more or less an accident. Finding Kai in a place like this was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack…

A primitive, disease-ridden, and most likely hostile haystack…

"Looks like I've got no choice…" Kestrel said with a sigh,

Focusing what little psychic energy she had left, she began to focus it into her eyes once again. It had been almost a full 24 hours since she had used falconsight, but without sleep, only so much of her energy had been replenished. Unfortunately it seemed to be the only way to find Kai at the moment, especially on a terra she knew nothing about.

And that was of course, assuming she hadn't arrived too late…

Kestrel opened her eyes again, once more seeing the world through her falconsight. Almost immediately her eyes begin to throb with pain. There wasn't much energy left for prolonged use. The only thing she could do was look for any trace of the energy trail around the terra and find where it ended.

Kestrel looked once more at the terra, her eyes darting around trying to find the energy wake that matched her skimmer. But there was no trace of it at all.

"Come on…" she said through clenched teeth. "There's no way the energy trail could have dissipated this quickly."

The pain in her eyes was now beginning to seep into her head. Her movements quickened out of panic and she scanned the terra even faster this time. But her luck did not improve. There were at best, only one or two extremely weak energy wakes crisscrossing over the terra, but none of them matched the unique signature of her skimmer. She was about to give up when she saw something in the corner of her eye. She turned to see what looked like a skimmer flying at a high speed toward the terra.

"Oh you've gotta be kidding!" Kestrel exclaimed. "That better not be somebody else trying to cash in on Kai's bounty! If they think they can take my reward from me they have another th…"

Kestrel's worlds trailed off when she noticed the energy wake of the distant skimmer. It was the same as the unique crystal energy pattern she had been following all this time. She had to do look closely just to make sure she wasn't just seeing things out of desperation, but the skimmer's wake color did not change, which could only mean that skimmer was the one Kai had stolen four years ago.

This meant that the pilot of the skimmer had to be Kai.

Kestrel almost tipped her skimmer over and nearly lost her balance on the vehicle upon being hit with the realization. "Kai!? He's here now!? But how did I beat him here!? This doesn't make-!"

Kestrel almost tipped her skimmer over again, but this time it was from an eruption of pain in her head that felt like she was being smacked by Snipe's mace. She held her head in one hand and managed to turn the skimmer back to its upright position with the other. Finally, she deactivated her falconsight once her skimmer was stable again.

"Ugh…well I won't be getting another use out of _that_ today." She said with an exasperated sigh, still holding her head in pain. "Well this sucks; I can't use falconsight and the crystals in my weapons are dead. At this rate fighting Kai will be a lot more difficult than I wanted. Fortunately I still have one trick left, I didn't want to have to use it so soon but I guess I don't have a choice now."

Kestrel looked back to where she had seen the skimmer earlier, hoping she hadn't lost it. Sure enough, she could still see it, though now it was flying almost dangerously close to the top of the trees. One thing she had noticed before she lost use of her falconsight was that the wake pattern was somewhat unusual and seemed to circle around the terra. She saw the path going into the jungles below and out again as well as surveying the terra's coast from a relatively low altitude. The pattern suggested the pilot was searching for something.

"Huh...That's weird," said Kestrel, somewhat perplexed. "If Kai comes here regularly to get treatment, then unless the memory span of a sky shark he wouldn't be flying around looking for this place. If that is Kai, then he must've been flying around for awhile to have made a pattern like that."

Though the whole thing didn't make any sense, she couldn't very well get into a dogfight with Kai over a hostile terra. The only thing she could do was follow him, and with any luck corner him when he was being treated at the hospital. If he was as injured as he apparently had been on previous visits to this terra, then he wouldn't be able to put up too much of a fight.

"Heh, I had really hoped to beat him to a pulp myself," she said. "But my guess is if he's flying like that, he's probably disoriented from blood loss or something along those lines. I don't wanna kill him after all."

Kestrel paused for a minute, and after realizing she hadn't been spotted, reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a bluish-purple crystal.

"_Kai may be the pirate here," _she thought, _"But I'm not above stealing from that brat Cyclonis either."_

Kestrel then inserted the crystal into her skimmer and began to take off again. No sooner had she begun moving did both she and her vehicle begin to shimmer for a few seconds before fading completely from sight.

Using the modified cloaking crystal, Kestrel could create a field that bent light around a certain diameter. In her case, it cloaked everything within a 20 ft radius. It didn't make her completely transparent like Cyclonis' original cloaking crystals, but it helped save time by creating a cloaking field instead of wasting time using the crystal on herself and her skimmer separately. It was a quick and precise weapon of defense and offense, perfect for escape, or for an ambush.

"Nice work as always Gyr, you really ought to create a market for this," she said aloud. She then revved her skimmer's throttle and took off at top speed for the distant skimmer "Now the hunt can really begin."

Kestrel spent quite some time following the skimmer around the terra. Though she knew she wouldn't be spotted, Kestrel was careful to keep her distance so that Kai couldn't possibly hear her skimmer's engines or see the faint shimmer of her outline behind him. For the most part Kai was keeping to the jungle's tree line, most likely trying to find the hospital again. But then the skimmer suddenly pulled up. It shot up so fast that Kestrel, who had been behind at a slightly higher altitude, nearly crashed into him. Her instincts almost caused her to yelp but she regained control before the sounds escaped her throat.

"Hah, surprise, surprise. It's almost looks like he's trying to evade me even though he can't see me." She said as soon as she grinded her skimmer to a halt and watched as the skimmer took off.

After letting the skimmer get a little distance she began her pursuit again. The skimmer flew toward what looked like a small mountain and began a climb slightly higher as Kai neared it. Kestrel waited a moment before following the same flight pattern. She followed the skimmer as it flew around the mountain in circles, apparently hoping to spot something along its surface. After an annoying while playing roundabout, Kai finally stopped and flew directly at the mountain. Kestrel quickly followed, certain that Kai wasn't going to fly directly at the mountain, but as usual, kept her distance just in case. Suddenly, the skimmer slowed and made foe what looked like a flat surface near the mountain's summit. It was as if someone had carved out the mountainside to create a landing strip for skimmers. As the Kai's skimmer shifted into its land form and screeched to a halt near the end of the strip, it seemed that was the exact purpose it served.

"_Huh…clever," _Kestrel said, impressed. _"No one below would see it and most pilots passing by probably wouldn't think much of it. It gives my place a run for its money."_

Kestrel brought her cloaked skimmer as close as she could and slammed on the brakes as soon as she felt she was close enough. She then pressed a button on her skimmer and virtually all the engines cut off, while several smaller engine ports appeared at the bottom of her skimmer.

Her modified skimmer had several useful gadgets that helped her to be stealthy when need be. But her "silent-flight mode" was best suited for close-proximity reconnaissance. It allowed her to hover in the air for short periods of time using small repulsor engines at the bottom of the skimmer. The only noise they made was a light hissing. And at this altitude, the wind drowned out even that sound. Kestrel knew she could probably attack Kai now, but she didn't want any witnesses and it that door in from of them opened and someone saw her, it would most likely mean trouble later.

Kestrel remembered one of the most important Black Ops rules she was taught when she was trained in Cyclonia: "make friends with your environment." Basically it meant that to have the advantage over an enemy, one should make use of the senses. When one made use of the senses in an unknown area, they could "see" the surroundings, "hear" the natural sounds, and "smell" the air around them, and finally using intuition to look for anomalies. By using one's natural senses, even in a new environment, one could determine what "belonged" in that environment and what didn't. In other words, one could separate the natural from the technological, the old from the new. It was that simple rule that showed her the door in the first place, and she wasn't about to let anything else take her by surprise. Not when she was so close…

Of course, none of her senses prepared her for what she saw next.

She saw the pilot hop off the skimmer and make for the door. The pilot had somewhat short, purplish hair, green eyes, and an obviously feminine figure. She also wore a flight suit that Kestrel didn't recognize.

"_Ohhhh-kaaay…that's definitely _NOT_ Kai," _thought Kestrel. "_Who the heck is that? Better not be another bounty hunter!" _

Kestrel wasn't sure what was going on and didn't want to take a chance on missing something important, but the wind was making it much harder for her to hear anything. Reluctantly she decided to find a place to land. Fortunately, she didn't have to look far before she found what looked like a small ridge below the landing strip. While it was a tight squeeze she managed to slowly move her skimmer to the ridge and land it safely. She then deactivated the cloaking crystal, certain that no one would see it and walked toward the end of the ridge, where she saw that the landing strip was about 20 feet above her.

"Ok then, time for some rock-climbing," said Kestrel, then with a running start latched herself to the rock formation. The climb up wasn't difficult; Kestrel excelled at parkour and was in excellent shape, the wind however was biting cold and she hadn't dressed for inclement weather. Still she managed to climb up to the top where she saw the other skimmer parked close to the door. The woman wasn't in sight, but Kestrel had noticed earlier that the door was carved into the mountain slightly, leaving a very small tunnel, about 15 ft or so, between the door and the wind. As she got closer, Kestrel could also hear faint voices over the howling wind. Obviously, the woman was talking to someone.

Curious at the very least, and hoping they were discussing Kai's whereabouts, she put her back to the outer wall of the tunnel and crept slowly to the edge. She moved her head over the edge slightly, doing everything she could to make sure she wasn't spotted. Then at last she could hear the conversation with much more clarity.

"…Formalities aside, did Kai contact you about two days ago?" Kestrel heard the woman say.

"_Jackpot!"_

"Ah, that's why you're here. Yes, it was quite strange." Another voice replied, this one sounding younger than the first. "He sent a message here the day before yesterday, but I was out and Jim took it. All I could get out of it was he needed help of some sort, and that he would be here in the next few days."

"_Oh great, so he never showed up…" _thought Kestrel. _"If he wasn't going to be here, then why did the council give me Intel saying he was? I'll never understand the way those old farts do the crap they do!"_

"Yes, well, I came in his place to speak with you about that-"

"He isn't hurt again is he?" the younger girl interrupted. "I told him that I can't keep patching him up like that, it takes too long and we never know when we might get swamped."

"_Tch! 'swamped' yeah right!" _Kestrel thought, rolling her eyes. _"I bet people are just lining up to visit a hospital at the top of a freakin' mountain!" _

"Hurt again? I'm afraid I don't understand," she heard the older woman ask, which got Kestrel's attention. She expected them to go inside and discuss it, but the younger girl continued.

"Every now and then he comes stumbling in here at some godforsaken hour looking like he lost a fight to a blender," the younger girl replied in an exasperated tone. "I keep telling him that it's not safe to be on this terra with open wounds, but he just ignores me."

"How many times has this happened?" the woman asked sharply. Whatever was going on with Kai, this woman apparently didn't know about it. In fact, she probably didn't even realize he had come here for treatment. What was most interesting was that the woman almost sounded hurt, like she had been lied to.

"_Well, it's not impossible, but it seems less likely that she's a bounty hunter. But then who is she?"_

"About once every month or so," the girl replied. "Most of the time it's not really all that bad, just superficial lacerations with a sprain or two."

"_He's going to this backwater terra just for that?" _Kestrel was now genuinely confused. _"If he's not trying to hide his injuries, then what _is_ he hiding?" _

Kestrel knew that Kai was not always one for the conventional methods. But this whole situation seemed ridiculously complicated. Obviously there was more going on than just the casual sprain that would cause Kai to do this. But the question was what was causing him to resort to these extremes in the first place?

"And the _other _times?" she heard the older woman ask darkly.

"_Oh yes, do tell us about _those_ times!"_

There was a few seconds of silence before Kestrel heard the younger girl speak again. "Once he came in with several broken ribs, a fractured arm, and a dislocated shoulder. He looked like he had fallen off a terra. The last time….the last time though was pretty bad."

Kestrel couldn't help but listen intently as though she were hearing about a particularly nasty skimmer wreck on the radio. If for no other reason than to get more information on Kai, it was interesting news.

"Last time…he almost didn't make it." The girl continued, clearly uncomfortable talking about the subject. "Severe internal bleeding, compound fractures across most of his ribs, and I couldn't even count the number of sprains and breaks. Aside from that, nearly every muscle and tendon in his body was completely shredded. I didn't even know who he was when I first saw him."

"_Wow…I mean…ouch!" _Kestrel thought, almost feeling queasy herself. _"I almost feel sorry for him…keyword: ALMOST."_

The girl continued. "He was here for about a week, but when I went to check on him…all I found was a note apologizing for the trouble he had caused, and a small bag of gold. It paid for all the stuff we used to fix him up, and was actually a bit more than he needed to pay, but…I just…I don't like seeing a friend like that."

"…_Now I think I really AM gonna be sick!"_

It took a few seconds for the woman to respond. "Did he…ever tell you _how_ he got any of these injuries?" she asked finally.

"Let's go talk somewhere else," the girl replied tiredly. "I don't want to be standing any longer than I have to; it's been a long day."

"_Crap! They're going inside! I have to figure out how to get in there! It may be my only chance of finding Kai!" _

As soon as she heard the door close, Kestrel moved towards the door. It was obviously very solid and sturdy and she could tell by the clicking noises it made when it was closed that it was locked over multiple times.

"I don't have anywhere near the firepower to break this thing down," Kestrel stated. "Besides, the last thing I want to do is cause a panic in there. I'll have to find another way in."

Kestrel stepped back and observed the entirety of the mountaintop. "Maybe there's a window I can climb to or something." She said. "Let's hope this place actually_ has _windows, otherwise it would be a pretty lame hospital."

Kestrel scanned the mountainside with great intent, hoping to see anything that might resemble a window. It would have been easier if the wind wasn't whipping her face and blowing her hair into her eyes, forcing her to eventually hold it back, but she did not give up the search. After a few seconds of searching she saw what looked like a small indent to the east side of the door and about 50 or so feet high. What made it stick out was that it was carved out in a rectangular fashion

"Bingo!" Kestrel exclaimed. "Now to get up there, not much time left."

Once again she had to endure climbing up a rock wall with high altitude wind biting at her face. Of course, now it was a longer climb and more difficult than the first. She could feel her fingers getting number each time she pulled herself higher. Though the climb only took her about thirty seconds, it seemed like an eternity before she finally reached the window. Naturally, there was a pane of glass in it, no doubt to keep the cold air from bellowing in, but Kestrel, not wanting to break the window and cause a commotion, pushed it open with one hand and holding onto the rock face with the other.

"Whew! Good thing it isn't locked or I'd probably have fallen off by now." Kestrel said as she slid the window open and crawled inside.

The first thing she noticed about the room she was in was that it was dark. Aside from the natural light coming from the window there were no other lights. That was a good thing since she had no idea where the two doctors that were supposed to be here were and the last thing she needed was to run into one of them and blow her cover. That was another important black ops rule she had learned: "Don't go looking for trouble, only act when trouble comes to you." Basically it meant that anything other than the target was strictly off limits unless it was in the way. An example would be if you were spotted by guards and had to defend yourself, or if there is a sentry at the only entrance to the target's room, you could use aggressive tactics in those and similar situations, but actively eliminating guards was something to avoid as it causes suspicion and otherwise panic. The best option one had was to be stealthy and act only on the target.

This was Kestrel's best option at the moment.

She glanced at the room she was in; it was obviously a patient room, but thankfully it was empty. "So, the only room with a view eh? Must be for the high roller patients." She said with a laugh, and then casually stepped out of the room. Once she was sure no one had spotted her, she moved to the right, where the door had been and listened for the sounds of the two girls' voices. It didn't take her too long to hear their conversation pick up again. Then she saw the two of them. They were both sitting in chairs across from one another. Kestrel moved in to get a glimpse of the younger girl. She definitely was young: she couldn't have been older than 14. She had black hair similar to Kestrel's, but wavier and without the blond highlights at the end. Her eyes were a bright blue and they had a look of innocence about them, though at the moment the girl looked anxious, like she was being interrogated.

"_Hmm….maybe she's an intern or something?" _Kestrel thought._ "Ah who cares! That's not important anyway."_

As Kestrel moved in closer to hear what they were saying, she could tell the older woman's irritation, and the younger girl's discomfort, had amplified.

"…The lacerations usually are patterned, two, three, five, or seven paralleled." She heard the teen say. Kestrel already knew what that meant before the girl continued. "Meaning they were caused by a tooth or a claw. I actually have a small collection of leftovers from his visits if you would like to see them."

"If you wouldn't mind," the woman replied. She was trying to be polite, but was obviously seething with more negative emotions.

The teen girl got up first followed by the woman and they walked toward the clinic. As soon as the two were far enough away, Kestrel took the opportunity to drop down from the second floor to the first. Her feet barely made any noise as they touched the floor, a skill that came with years of training in stealth tactics. She then crept quickly towards the clinic door, which was conveniently left open.

As she got closer she noticed what looked like a clipboard lying in some folders near the door. She noticed the writing to be the same as most terras in Atmos use, meaning that despite the level of technology here, this hospital at the very least had contact with the rest of the free Atmos on occasion. She picked it up and began to read it, hoping it may have more information on where Kai was coming from or going after he came to this place. Sadly, it was only a list of patients, with Kai's name not among them. Interestingly, it wasn't very long and it was written on the current date, but Kestrel also noticed that there were several layers of roughly torn shreds of paper at the top. From what she noticed it seemed that the girl kept records of patients only once a day and either filed the information in a more secretive location, or destroyed it. She didn't read deeply into the names of the patients as she was certain she most likely didn't know them, but made a special note to look at the signature of the doctor who had apparently treated most of them. She saw the name, Rondana Almanikets on the signature line at the bottom.

"_Well I guess Rondana is that younger girl," _Kestrel thought, _"And obviously she isn't an intern either." _She then quietly put the clipboard back and focused on what was going on inside the clinic.

Applying the same tactic as earlier, Kestrel put her back to the wall next to the door and slowly poked her head over the edge. Rondana and the older woman had their backs to her, obviously talking about something of interest. Fortunately, they were spaced far enough away from each other that Kestrel could see the younger girl pull out what looked like a box of supplies. When she opened it however, it was not what Kestrel had expected.

The contents of the box looked more like a hunter's collection of spoils from kills than medical supplies. Though she couldn't see its entirety from her angle, Kestrel clearly saw an assortment of what looked like teeth and claws from several creatures she couldn't identify off-hand. She could even see a few of them looked like they were violently broken off at the end, as if they had caught something and then whatever they had in their jaws or claws had managed to quickly (and painfully) break free.

"Starling, he's going to get himself killed one of these days." Rondana exclaimed. "He should have died a year ago for cripes sakes!"

Kestrel's face twisted in shock. _"ALL of those came from Kai!? You've gotta be kidding me!" _Kestrel was even more shocked when she saw the younger girl pull a very large and intimidating fang from the box

"See this?" Rondana said with an incensed tone. "I had to get Jim to pull it out because it was stuck in his femur, HIS FEMUR! What is he fighting out there that can bite through bone like a vanilla wafer?"

"_Well I figured I wasn't the only one who fought giant monsters on occasion out there," _Kestrel thought. _"But Kai, that's pretty sad if you get teeth and claws stuck in you on a regular basis. Are you even BOTHERNG to dodge?"_

"I can only deal with so much; I can only patch somebody up so many times knowing full well that next time he might come back even worse, if he even does come back at all. You've got to talk some sense into him, lord knows I've tried." The young girl was visibly upset. Apparently she was more acquainted with Kai than simply being his doctor. The two had obviously developed a friendship. As for the other woman, who she now knew was called Starling, Kestrel still wasn't sure what her relationship with Kai was, but from the way this information seemed to aggravate her, it was obvious that she was concerned about Kai as well.

"I…I had no idea." She said after a pause, no doubt to take in the scope of what was going on. It was clear that she cared about Kai too. The question was to what extent?

"It still doesn't even make sense," said Rondana

"What doesn't make sense?"

"In the past…I have found several chips and flakes of metal in his wounds, which I know were caused by some sort of weapon." Rondana replied. "But that doesn't explain everything. He's had burns and scorches from crystal weapons as well as fire and acids, in addition to gouges and wounds from teeth and claws,"

"_So he's been fighting sentient opponents too?"_ thought Kestrel wrapping her head around this recent revelation. _"Something tells me this is going beyond anything Cyclonia would throw at him. This sounds a lot like the work I do when I scout uncharted terras; lots of hostile animals and sometimes ancient security systems to deal with. But what Kai's doing sounds more like multiple suicide missions. That girl is right…if he went through all this on his own, especially on a daily basis, he should've been killed on several occasions by now. _

"But it still doesn't explain the muscle and tendon damage." Rondana continued. "At first I thought it might have been caused by poison, but none of the toxins that I have extracted from him ever proved to do anything of the like. The only correlation I could find is that the worse off he is when he shows up, the more likely he is to have that damage."

It took a few seconds for Kestrel to pull everything together, but then it hit her.

"_I get it," _she thought, _"He must be using those shadow powers of his. It explains why he was able to go through all that and still survive. As for the 'unexplained' muscle and tendon damage, my guess is that the shadow energy does damage to his body if he uses it in excess, maybe even if he uses it at all. And I'm betting he pushes it to the limit when he's going at it out there." _

Then, when Kestrel thought she had almost put together the reason for Kai's actions, she realized that was what she was missing: the reason. What she still didn't understand was why? Why did Kai put himself through this? Did it have something to do with his pirating career? Or was there something else at work? Whatever it was, it became clear that the Council hadn't told her everything.

"_Hmph, then I guess I'll have to find out myself." _She thought, reaching for her weapons, then slowly turning into the doorway and walking quietly toward the two.

"I think I might have an idea as to its cause," she heard Starling say as she crept closer to them, readying her tonfa. "That aside, he has requested that you aid him in a mission, would you be able to do so?"

Kestrel took the opportunity to press the sides of her weapons against both of their necks. The girl jumped slightly, but otherwise didn't make a sound, while the other one stood motionless. Kestrel was momentarily impressed at this, but then focused her attention back to the situation.

"Heartbreaking," she said. "Now, mind telling me where he is? I hate to waste time, and you girls look like your talking about something important, so if you would please, tell me where the coward is hiding?"

The two immediately tried to turn their heads, but Kestrel pressed her weapons harder into the side of their necks, freezing their heads in place. "Ah-ah-ah, you wouldn't want my hands to slip now would you?"

Kestrel felt Starling shift her body slightly, but paid it no mind. She had the advantage here.

"If you're looking for Jim, he's upstairs second door on the right," Rondana replied timidly.

Suddenly Kestrel saw lights come on one floor above her "Oh thanks a lot, a real team player you are!" An older man shouted, he sounded like he was in his 30s or 40s; at least that's what his voice indicated rather than his dialogue.

"Oh like you wouldn't have sold me out?"

Kestrel rolled her eyes before speaking "Oh would you two shut up!?" she spat "Do you really think I'd be here for some worthless doctor? I'm looking for bigger game." She turned back to Starling. "You said his name not long ago, and that skimmer parked outside has his stench all over it. Now tell me, where is Kai?"

"Who are you?" she heard Rondana ask

"Tch! Like it matters! Look, just tell me where he's hiding and nobody gets hurt," was Kestrel's reply.

It was then that Kestrel noticed something she hadn't taken the time to see before. The older woman's flight suit was designed similarly to that of a Sky Knight. She also had weapons of her own; what appeared to be nunchaku.

"_Wait a second," _Kestrel thought._ "She didn't flinch when my tonfa touched her, she shifted her body towards me as if to shift her weight, and to top it all off, she has Sky Knight-style armor and weapons. So that means she-"_

Kestrel didn't have time to finish her thoughts before she heard the woman shout out a war cry and Kestrel felt a sharp elbow ram into her stomach. The attack came so fast that she couldn't react and could only lurch over as the hit collided. She didn't have time to recover though as she saw Starling's palm drop below her face level, only to come back up and strike her directly on her chin, sending her head flying back up.

"I don't know who you are, and frankly, I don't really care. But no one threatens my friends and gets away with it." She heard Starling shout. As soon as Kestrel recovered from the attack she looked up to see the woman's nun chucks, now glowing with a white light, about to slam down on her head. She managed to bring her weapons up to defend just in time.

"_Great! I have dead weapons and no falconsight and I have to run into a really pissed off sky knight bodyguard! As if things could get any worse!"_

"You…you will pay!" Starling roared and began to push down on Kestrel. Starling was maybe an inch or two taller, and Kestrel had been so caught off guard she had unintentionally allowed her to gain leverage on her and without her weapons at full power, she couldn't push her back off.

"Grr…how did you know I was coming here!?" Kestrel demanded. Had Kai figured out she was following him and sent this Sky Knight as a decoy.

She was answered with a knee to the stomach, causing her to stagger over again. "I didn't. You're the one that came in here and attacked us."

"Attacked" was hardly the word Kestrel would have used. "Threaten" maybe but she didn't actually attack them. It still didn't seem to warrant the level of aggression Starling was exuding. As soon as Kestrel recovered she attempted to counter, but the Sky Knight was faster and wrapped her hand around her neck. Then with full fury she ran and thrust Kestrel into the wall with great force. The impact caused her tonfa to drop from her hands. Kestrel found herself pinned to the wall by Starling, one hand wrapped around her neck. She wasn't choking her, but instead was just holding her in place.

"_Heh, she's stronger than she looks," _Kestrel thought, mortified that anyone had gotten such an advantage over her, but at the same time, impressed with the woman's skills. _"I can't believe I'm in this position, it's so embarrassing…"_

"Now tell me, who are you and what do you want with Kai?"Starling demanded. Rondana and Jim appeared behind her, both of them on one side.

Kestrel didn't respond at first, but stared Starling down, still reeling from losing so humiliatingly. But as everything about this woman's relationship with Kai and her burst of rage began to fit into place, Kestrel couldn't help but laugh dryly.

Starling clearly didn't take this lightly. "What's so funny?" She demanded, slamming Kestrel into the wall again, which did nothing but keep Kestrel laughing.

"It all makes sense now." she replied and looked back at Starling with a mocking smirk. "I come looking for Kai, and who else should I find than his little Crush Girl?"

"Who are you?" Rondana asked

Kestrel turned her attention to the girl and glared. "Trust me, the less you know, the better off you are."

Her attention was averted back to Starling as the Sky Knight shoved her again. "I asked you a question. Now tell me who are you, and why are you after Kai?"

"_Again with the shoving… you trying to act tough or something Crush Girl?" _Kestrel thought. _"When I get out of this…"_ Kestrel allowed her own rage to settle. It was obvious that Kai wasn't here and there was no reason to risk anything in her state when she could use Kai's friends to help her find him. She waited until all three of them were watching her face before discreetly reaching into her back pocket and pulling out a small device.

"Well, since you asked _so_ nicely." She replied mockingly, as she did so she casually motioned her hand toward Starling's thigh and placing the small tracking device on it. "My name is Kestrel, and my business with Kai is my own."

As Kestrel predicted, Starling shoved her again. "Now you listen to me, and you had better listen well. I don't care who you are, if you have any business with Kai, then you have business with me!"

"Aww, how sickeningly sweet, I think I'm going to have a cavity, if I don't puke first!" Kestrel spat.

"Allow me, if you will?" Jim said, pulling a needle from his coat.

"Tch! What's that? A flu shot?"

"No, its sodium pentothal, also known as truth serum." The older man said with a grin.

Kestrel was no stranger to truth serum, and she knew how it worked. "Oh no, your no-" she said trying to break free, but Starling held her fast. She felt the prick of the needle and some small pressure as the chemical entered her bloodstream. It didn't take long before she began to feel the effects of the drug.

"How long does it take to work?" she heard Starling ask Jim, then Kestrel saw the room begin to spin slightly.

"Hmm not long, a few minutes and she should be singing like a canary."

"Alright, let's try this again shall we? Who are you, and why are you after Kai?" Starling asked Kestrel

"Oh go to…" Kestrel's head slumped down as the drug's groggy, disorienting side effects took told. She knew how the drug worked; it didn't make a person infallibly tell the truth, but it did make them more talkative. But she was going to tell them the truth anyway so she decided to humor them.

"My name…is…Kestrel….one L…." _"Wait…one L? Why would I say that? What does that even mean?"_

"Why were you after Kai?" Kestrel heard Rondana ask. Kestrel rolled her head back up to face her.

"He's…got a…big…price…on his…head…." She said before her head slumped back down again.

"Great, she's a bounty hunter." Starling said with a sigh.

Kestrel looked up at her with annoyance. "I…prefer the term…freelancer…"

"Same difference," said Jim.

"Yeah…about the same…difference… between you…and a…competent… doctor…" she shot back. _"If I'm going to be drugged and forced to spill my guts for Kai's little girlfriend I may as well have some fun while I'm doing it."_

"Who put a bounty on Kai's head? What did he do?" Rondana asked. Kestrel as surprised that it was her who asked the question and not Starling, but she figured that perhaps she didn't want to hear the truth.

"Same…people…as…last…time..." Kestrel replied with a weak laugh.

As soon as she said that, Starling released Kestrel who, still groggy from the drug, fell to the ground.

"Starling?" Rondana said as the tried to shake the Sky Knight out of her stupor. "Starling? What is she talking about? What bounty? What's going on?"

"Those rats…" Starling said through clenched teeth. "I can't believe they would stoop to this low. Is this how petty they really are?"

"_Hmm…just as I expected," _thought Kestrel, noticing her mind was beginning to clear, meaning the drug was wearing off. "_As a Sky Knight she obviously works for the Council, so to realize that the Council has put the bounty on his head again would definitely get her anger seething."_

"Who? Who is it?" Rondana asked, clearly having missed something. She obviously wasn't as familiar with Kai's history as Starling and Kestrel were.

Starling turned to Rondana, trying as hard as she could to calm her tone. "It's not something you need to worry about, not now anyway." She replied. "If you're going to help on this mission, go pack anything essential you might need. Kai has a storehouse of supplies, but he doesn't have everything." Rondana responded with a nod and quickly took off

"_Mission?" _Kestrel asked in her head. _"Well that at least explains why she came here in Kai's place, even if it's only a partial explanation. _

Starling then turned back to her. "So you're Kestrel." She said. "Kai told me about a bounty hunter that chased him halfway across Atmos four years ago, one that used tonfa if memory serves. The only one that matched that description at the time was you, but I never managed to track you down back then, and here you are now."

Kestrel looked at Starling with a lazy, careless expression, but otherwise didn't respond.

"I know for a fact that the bounty on Kai expired three years ago." Starling stated. "The council can't lay a hand on him, so tell me the truth, who put a price on his head hmm?" She lightly kicked Kestrel in the side to initiate a response."

"Tch! So what if it expired? You think that matters to them?" she scoffed, "The council itself can't touch him, but the council members still can. Besides, it's personal too. He still owes me a skimmer. And by _a_ skimmer, I mean _my _skimmer… "

"_Oh crap! I completely forgot about my skimmer!" _Kestrel screamed in her head._ "Crush Girl here was the one riding it, and now they're gonna escape with it AGAIN! Geez! I can't believe I forgot about it…"_

"Umm, I have everything that I'll need. Shouldn't we leave now?" Kestrel heard Rondana say from a doorway on the other side of the room.

Starling Glared one last time at Kestrel before following Rondana.

"Ooooh! Scary…" She mumbled.

She waited awhile before attempting to stand up, the effects of the drug were all but gone, but her balance was still off slightly. As soon as she found her footing she began to make for the exit.

"Geez, that stuff makes you feel groggy…" she said, her head beginning to spin a little as she stood completely up. "Ugh! I can't believe I took all that just so they would lead me to Kai…"

Remembering the tracking device she had planted on Starling, Kestrel reached into her pants pocket and pulled out another, larger device; the tracker for the bug she had planted.

"Perfect! Lead me right to my payday Crush Girl!" Kestrel exclaimed with satisfaction. "It's high time I finally got my big score…and maybe even give Crush Girl a little payback!"

She then flipped the switch to turn the device on and took at look at the screen.

It was black…

"Oh, you have got to…I can't believe this!" she snapped. The device was clearly broken, probably when she had been knocked into the wall. Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to leave it in her back pants pocket…

"Aggh! I was so close this time too..." she said. It wasn't true; in fact she was barely ahead of where she started. But after coming all the way out to a disease-infested terra, losing a fight humiliatingly, and being drugged, she had to console herself somehow. She let out a heavy sigh before saying, "I'll just have get the darn thing fixed I guess."

Using the same method as she used to get in, she climbed out of the building and eventually made it all the way back to her own skimmer. As she figured, her old skimmer was nowhere to be found. Starling and Rondana had no doubt taken it to wherever Kai was hiding. The only hope she had was to get her tracking device fixed before she lost their signal for good.

"I get the feeling this is gonna be a looooong job!" she said as she brought her skimmer to life. Once she took off and was a good distance away, she looked back to Pathologica and grinned wickedly.

"Don't you guys go anywhere, especially you Kai" she slammed the throttle and took off for Amazonia as fast as possible.

"I'll be right back..."

A/N: Okay! So how was that? I'm not entirely pleased with it but I hope everyone enjoys it. This was my first time incorporating someone else's work into a story of mine so it's quite possible I made some mistakes. So MissDedodakes, if I made any grievous errors concerning your terra or OCs please let me know and I will correct them. I have a paper to write and an online course to take care of so I probably won't get this out before next week, but hopefully it will take less time than this chapter to come out lol

Laterz!


	4. Chapter 4: The Light in the Darkness

Fighting Wings Chapter 4:

The Light in the Darkness

A/N: Hey everyone! (All 5 of you lol) now that I've gotten the convergence chapter out of the way, I figured I'd take this opportunity to reveal a little bit more about Kestrel's backstory. Naturally I will not reveal everything as I may eventually introduce another story that deals with Kestrel's past entirely, similar to Archer's Yesteryears story. But with so many other projects and with RL stuff to think about we'll just have to see where it goes. But anyway, it won't be an entirely solemn and somber chapter, if anything I'm going to throw in both comedy and some dark moments into this chapter. Well let's see how this one turns out shall we? I'm trying to make part of it into a bit of a tearjerker too, so if I make any of you cry, then I guess I did my job well LOL!

Disclaimer: I do not own Storm Hawks: said show is owned by Nerd Corps Entertainment and Asaph "Ace" Fipke. And of course, as you all know, I do in fact, own Kestrel, Gyr, Hiero, and this story…so there you go.

Many thanks go out to RGZ Archer for shamelessly advertising Fighting Wings on his own story Winds of Change, for free even. So go and read his story already! I know some of you TDT readers would like it. :D (That will be updated soon btw :P)

No OC's in this chapter (other than my own of course :P) but I'm still gonna thank everyone who has read and reviewed my story so far. Thank you for your encouragement and supportive words, but also don't be afraid to give me constructive criticism if you see it is needed. :P

"Hey! Can I get another one over here?" Kestrel shouted over the music and idle chatter of The Wayside. The self-proclaimed "superior freelance agent" was sitting in a booth of the restaurant, practically slumped over in her seat as though in a haze. Her hair was a mess (more than usual) and her eyelids wsere heavy enough to be dragging carriers. It seemed the only thing keeping her from falling out of it was her hand on an old-fashioned milkshake glass.

Originally, Kestrel had stopped at The Wayside to refuel her skimmer and hopefully find some recharge crystals for a temporary boost to her weapons until she could completely recharge them at home. Instead she found herself drowning the pain of her humiliation in the restaurant's famous chocolate milkshakes.

"Oh yeah, come to mama…" she said lustily as she wrapped her lips around the straw and loudly slurped the chocolate ice cream from the glass. Usually when she was disheartened, chocolate was her miracle pill. Today however, it seemed all the milkshakes in the world couldn't shake her from her stupor.

Kestrel had grown accustomed to many things, good and bad, in her 21 years of life, but she could never get used to losing…especially when she was made to look like a first-year rookie in the process.

"I know I only let Kai's little crush girl get away with that so she would lead me to him, but just the thought of it…and then the tracker doesn't work on top of that…it just…ugh!" Kestrel sucked on the straw even harder, forcing more milkshake through it even faster in an attempt to vent her growing frustration. Then she felt a throbbing pain erupt behind her right eye and held that side of her face in her open hand.

"Ahh! Not again!" she muttered loudly, her third brain freeze of the day reminding her of why it was always a bad idea to drink a milkshake too fast. _"That's MORE pain I've had to suffer through because of Kai!"_

A large man came up to Kestrel's table, he wore a standard light blue shirt and had it partially covered by his grease-stained apron. The man had a big moustache and a rather large gut. Kestrel immediately recognized him as the restaurant's manager.

"I see you have a big appetite today." He said. He wasn't smiling.

"Yeah, you could say that…" Kestrel replied tiredly, continuting to sip on her milkshake rather loudly.

The manager glanced at her table; there the surface was nearly covered with empty milkshake glasses. "Exactly how many shakes have you had today missy?"

"Kestrel looked at the glasses lazily. "Only one…two…sixteen." she said, "so can you go ahead and bring me number seventeen now?"

"I think you've had enough…" he began, but then he felt his cuff tighten as Kestrel gripped it tightly and pulled his head down to Kestrel's eye level.

"Don't you even _try_ to tell me I've had enough…"She said angrily. "I ordered it, I pay for it, and you make it. That's the way it goes. Now go back there and make another one!"

Kestrel released him and he stood back up again. "Alright fine, another one coming up…" the manager was clearly irritated, but went back into the kitchen regardless. After a few minutes he returned with another full milkshake glass. Kestrel eyed it longingly, with every step toward her she could almost feel the sweet, chocolatey taste on her tongue. Instead of setting it on the table, the manager stopped just a few steps short.

"You know, I thought of something as I was bringing this to you," he said. "How do you plan to pay for all these?"

Kestrel's eyes bugged out; she had no more money left, and her tab had been bled dry since last week. She knew she was in a bind now, but at the same time she needed that shake. So the thought of something she had hoped she would never have to resort to…

"Do you take I.O.U.s…?"

"mmhmm…"the manager said, but not in the agreeing kind of way. Then he suddenly turned around and started walking the other way.

"Hey…where are you going with that?" Kestrel asked, beginning to panic. She hopped up from her seat almost knocking down some of her empty glasses in the process. The manager however continued to walk away until he got to the exit. He then proceeded to casually open the door.

"Wait…what do you think you're doing?!" Kestrel's heart was beating a mile a minute, fearing what he was planning to do with her dessert. She ran toward him, hoping to stop him from doing the unthinkable.

But it was too late…

With one swing of his arm the manager tossed the milkshake outside.

"NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

Kestrel burst past him and leaped out the door to try and catch it. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion as she saw the shake glass spinning through the air, the centrifugal force keeping the ice cream from completely falling out, but a few drops still managed to break free. As she sailed through the air towards it, she managed to catch it right side-up in both hands before falling to the pavement.

"Yes! Thank you!" she exclaimed with joy, hugging the shake closely to her face, not even minding the coldness on her cheek. "I've got you! My preciousssss!"

"You're lucky you're one of my best customers!" she heard a gruff, rather angry voice behind her, she turned to see the irate manager in front of the Wayside's entrance. "Come back when you can pay your tab!" he then slammed the door shut and walked away. It was clear that Kestrel wouldn't be welcomed back in there until she had paid up…

Kestrel got up, being careful not to drop any of the shake left in the glass she carried. She was feeling angry herself now, she didn't know exactly where it came from, but for now she wanted to direct it at the manager.

"Yeah well it'll be a cold day in Oblivion before I come back here any way you stupid fat piece of-"

_HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNKKKK! _

The incoming signal from a docking carrier drowned out Kestrel's long string of profanities as she screamed them at the restaurant door. Once the carrier's horn had ceased, she had stopped swearing as well.

"Uh oh…I _really _hope he didn't hear all that…" Kestrel said to herself fearfully, apparently having not heard the loud honking behind her somehow. "This place really does have the best milkshakes; I wouldn't survive if I suddenly got banned for life."

Suddenly, she found herself looking at her shake, which was now starting to drip in her hand from all the jostling she had done earlier, back at the reastuarnt, and then just took a moment to look at the sky.

"_Tch! Look at me…getting all worked up over this,"_ she thought. _"So I didn't find Kai this time, so I got caught off guard, so what? It's no reason to be moping in some rest-stop drowning my defeat in chocolate shakes. If I wanna get back on track, then I need to take action!"_

However, Kestrel could feel her eyelids starting to get heavy from all she had been though these last few days. "geez I'm beat," she said. "I guess I'd better head home. Maybe I can finally get some relaxation in. Then we can figure out what to do next."

With that, Kestrel hopped on her skimmer and took off for home.

…

The flight back to Terra Amazonia was, naturally, not a pleasant one. Though Kestrel didn't run into any new troubles on the way back, the old ones were bad enough.

Kestrel was still plenty upset about Kai slipping away again, but the very fact that she was tracking him again gave her a sense of nostalgia.

And it wasn't the nice, warm-hearted kind either…

Bringing up Kai in her mind again also resurfaced other, more non-pleasant memories that she had kept in the back of her mind until now. The hunt for her most elusive prey had been something to focus on at the time. Now however, with the trail turning cold again, she began to wander into the darker recesses of her memory.

She remembered what it was like to chase Kai across the Atmos four years ago; he was being shuttled to several different Terras and only seemed to stay in one spot for a few weeks at best. By the time she had managed to find him again, he was already off to another terra. Then at one point she had figured out his flight pattern and had almost managed to ambush him at his next stop…

Then there was _that_ day…

Kestrel shook her head erratically, trying to keep the memory buried inside. She didn't want to think about it again, not now.

It didn't take her long to realize that she was once again chewing softly on a few strands of her hair, a force of habit she often did when anxious or nervous. She spit the hair out, holding it between her finger and thumb again and trying to stroke out the spit. She then noticed the blond highlights at the end of the strands. They were about an inch or so long; she had never really bothered to look at them, much less measure them, and her long hair was rimmed with them around the edges, even on her bangs. She couldn't help but scowl every time she saw them. She didn't think they were ugly or anything, she just didn't like them because they were a reminder of what had happened.

After what was done to her.

To her they were more like scars, and just like scars she could do nothing to remove them…

She took a few more moments to be lost in her thoughts before Amazonia came into view. She docked in her usual spot and headed inside where she found Gyr at the kitchen table, complete with tools and schematics strewn on and around the table.

"_Well at least he isn't still sleeping…"_ she thought with a smirk.

Upon hearing the door swing open, Gyr turned around. Not sure if he should smile or not.

Upon seeing her grimacing face, he decided on "not"…

"So…"

"Don't wanna talk about it..." she said quickly. She them removed her tonfa from her belt and tossed them to the table with a tired sigh before plopping herself face first onto the couch.

"What happened?" he asked, out of curiosity if anything.

"What do you _think_?" said Kestrel, her voice muffled through the sofa cushion she had buried her face in.

"He escaped again?"

Kestrel lifted her face from the couch and met Gyr with an annoyed glare. "No, he wasn't even there!"

Gyr raised an eyebrow. "Yeah…somehow I don't see you getting like this if you simply didn't find him. Obviously there's something else…

"I said I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!!!!!"

But of course, Kestrel _did_ talk about it; it took a lot of prodding on Gyr's part and a lot of threats on Kestrel's, but in the end she had to get the stress off her chest and Gyr was the only one who she could truly call a friend, and therefore the only one she felt close enough to talk about her problems. She ended up telling him about what happened at Terra Pathologica, but didn't forget to mention her run-in with Domiwick on the way there.

"Hmm…now I see why you didn't want to talk about it…"

Gyr regretted his words as soon as they escaped his lips

Kestrel at first looked like she was going to explode at Gyr's comment, but that only lasted for a second before she appeared to calm down, close her and smile gently.

Naturally Gyr was stunned. He had never seen her take a comment like that so well

"Gyr?" she said softly

Still in shock, Gyr took a second before realizing she had spoken. "Uh…yeah?"

Kestrel opened her eyes again, and her gentle smile evaporated into a malicious grin.

"You don't _want_ me to beat you senseless do you?"

She still spoke as gently as before, but now all that did was make her more frightening than when she simply flew into a rage, which was what Gyr was usually accustomed to.

"Uh…you ok?" Gyr asked warily and braced himself for a fist and/or hard foreign object to come into contact with his face.

Kestrel sighed before replying. "You know, I thought I'd be angrier, what with losing Kai's trail again, being caught off guard and humiliated by one of his little entourage girls, being thrown out of the Wayside, and you basically pouring salt into my already gaping wounds…figuratively speaking of course. But I guess I'm not…"

Gyr let out a relieved sigh. "Well I'm glad to see you're taking it so w-"

"Or," Kestrel continued her gentle, yet foreboding smile returning. "Maybe I'm just so unbelievably full of unbridled rage and fury, that I've come full-circle." She smiled wider, she looked like she was happy or excited. But it was obvious based on what she had just said that behind her smile was a carrier-load or rage bagging to be loosed. "Either way, I think I need to go work this out."

She casually got up from the sofa, making Gyr jump in the process. But she moved past him and headed for the door.

"Uh…where are you going?" Gyr asked, both scared and a little confused.

Kestrel turned to him, grinning so hard that it looked like her lips could almost reach her ears. "Oh I'm just gonna go out and punch the cavern walls for about an hour, see ya later!"

Gyr motioned to the table where Kestrel had previously tossed her tonfa "But wait, don't you think you might need-"

"Nope, don't need those," she interrupted cheerfully. "I'm so pissed off right now I could probably hit the walls for five minutes and make enough room for a second bedroom so you don't have to sleep on the sofa anymore…or maybe a pool! Wouldn't that be awesome?"

Kestrel practically skipped merrily through the door before it shut again. Gyr couldn't help but stare at the door for a few seconds, still in utter shock.

"Frightening…Truly Frightening…."

Suddenly the door slid open again and Kestrel poked her head through, the same eerily cheerful grin on her face.

"You say somethin'?"

Gyr nearly jumped out of his skin. "What? No no! I was just…er…talking to myself. You know…like I usually do…" he said with a nervous laugh.

"Oh, ok! Bye!" she said before closing the door again. Gyr couldn've sworn he heard

her giggle at least a little before she left, which only served to make his skin crawl.

Gyr had seen Kestrel angry before; she got angry, or at least frustrated by things a lot. Gyr had gotten used to the yelling and ranting she normally did, but to see her so unbelievably enraged that she would react like that…

Gyr walked to the table and sat down. He then proceeded to slump his head over the table as if he had just been knocked cold. Then, with a heavy sigh, he had only one thing left to say.

"Women…"

After the promised hour was up and Kestrel and finished pummeling the cavern walls, she only found that her knuckles were bleeding and she only felt mildly better. When she couldn't take the pain anymore she finally stopped to take her fingerless gloves off and bandage her hands.

"_heh, good thing they're already red," _she thought as she slipped her gloves back on after finishing up with the bandages. She flexed her fingers and tightened her hands into fists in a repetitive exercise to make sure the bandages were tight enough. She winced as she felt the stinging pain in her knuckles, but her grip still seemed strong enough.

Kestrel then noticed a faint golden light shining on her glove. The light itself had tiny shimmers dancing within it. Kestrel looked to the source of the light and she could see the golden light of the evening sun shining past the waterfall. What she had seen was the sun's light had been reflecting off of the water in the cavern.

Kestrel smiled; she had always liked to see the sunset, especially when it turned the skies orange and reflected off of the water like a thousand stars dancing on its surface. She rarely had time to see it anymore because her jobs had kept her away until usually the night or maybe midday if she was lucky, and even then she was usually so tired she slept through the day until the next morning.

Kestrel eagerly ventured off from behind the waterfall and started climbing the rocky surface around the cascading water. The rock climbing hurt her knuckles, but she didn't care, she wasn't going to miss seeing this from a better viewpoint.

She climbed a short distance up until she made it to the top of the waterfall. She was not quite at the top of the terra itself, there was definitely a few hundred square miles of Amazonia above her. But this was the highest place on the terra with a good sized waterfall and an un-obscured view of the sun as it was setting. She reached the top and saw the dense forest in front of her, but near the edge where was a small section of red dirt and rock just at the fall's edge.

In Kestrel's opinion, it was the most peaceful place in all of Atmos.

She looked toward the horizon, seeing the orange sun as it began its slow descent below the second cloud line. She couldn't help but smile as she saw it. Something about this terra, the setting sun between the two cloud lines, the sounds of the indigenous fauna in the jungles behind her, the rustling leaves and branches in the wind, the sound of rushing water as it spilled down the falls, it was all like a tranquil symphony, each instrument resonating in perfect unison with one another. No man-made instrument could ever be as crisp, as melodic as the sounds of nature itself, the sound of life.

Kestrel closed her eyes, breathed slowly and went into a Sky-Chi stance. She then performed the steps in a slow, fluid motion. Her body moved in a slow unison as she shifted from one stance to another, she breathing was in unison with her movements, inhaling as she exited a stance and exhaling as she shifted to the next. Sky-Chi was a technique she had recently learned shortly after leaving Cyclonia, easily her newest martial art form. She had taken up this art from the Amazonians after they offered to teach her some of their techniques when she and Gyr had helped rebuild their homes after a Raider party had attacked them. While Sky-Chi was technically still a fighting style, it was also used to center oneself and find inner balance. Something Kestrel had desperately needed after what she had been through.

In this place of tranquility, Kestrel felt that it was the only place that she could be allowed to relive the memories of her past. It was the only place that she could confront all of her anger, her grief, and her sorrow, and channel it through her movements and allow it to float away freely into the peaceful atmosphere of her surroundings. But despite all this, she was never free of the pain she had endured. She remembered her father; she remembered Cyclonia. Her nightmares continued to relive her darkest moments in her mind. They reminded her every night of what she had done, both against her will and only to keep hold of her will, on behalf of Cyclonia. She could see the faces of men and women screaming before their lives were taken from them, too many for her to count, not because there were many, but because there were enough to fill her mind.

No matter how many screams and cries there were in her dreams, they were all the same…

Kestrel suddenly lost balance and fell over on her knees as she suddenly felt the full force of her anguish roll over her. All she could do was be on her hands and knees and stare at the ground beneath her. She started breathing heavily as if she had run a mile. She could feel her remorse burning in her heart. She felt it like a lump in her throat, as if a thousand confessions and cries of pain were trying to escape from her lungs. Adamantly, she swallowed with a large gulp as if she were trying to send her guilt back to the pit of her stomach. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes but she forced them back. She didn't want to remember those times, not now, not like this.

Taking a deep breath she stood back up again and tried to find her center once more. It took some time but eventually Kestrel managed to reach inner peace once again. She had shoved her bad memories away into the darkest corner of her mind and instead tried to focus on the sereneness around her. She decided not to continue her Sky-Chi and simply sat down at the edge of the cliff, letting her legs dangle and swing over the edge as she focused on the beautiful sunset before her. The sun had gotten lower since earlier and now the clouds below it were painted with gold and orange hues as the sun's light reached the top, and below the clouds looked purplish, like the color of a deep bruise. Kestrel couldn't help but chuckle a little when she thought of that particular analogy; after all, bruises were her business, or so she liked to say. But she didn't want to focus on work at this moment so she decided to direct her mind elsewhere. She closed her eyes and tried to think of something to dwell upon.

Kestrel was careful about the memories she allowed to come into her mind, she didn't want to delve into her sordid past again. Still, she found her mind drawing of her memories once again, but this time it wasn't in Cylconia.

She remembered a field. It was green and full of little white flowers in the grass. She was five years old, which she remembered because she could see how big the grass and flowers looked back then. She was running through the field, looking up at the sky as she ran. She could remember the sky was cloudless but it wasn't just that day, it was as if there had never been clouds there at all. There also were no bugs of birds or animals of any kind in this place, though she recalled seeing them before, this place she remembered didn't seem have them at all. Kestrel remembered feeling the warmth of the sun though, and she remembered the sounds of running water, not like the falls but softer and slower, like a stream. In her present mind, it didn't make sense that there were never clouds, or that it never rained, or that she had never seen any animals in this place, but when she was only five she was too oblivious to notice those things.

At the time, she was happy and carefree; all she wanted to do was play and have fun, nothing else was of any pressing concern back then. She was only a child, free of responsibility and ignorant of the world and its evils. She could remember laughing and giggling all the time, there always seemed to be a smile on her face then. The pure, unbridled innocence Kestrel had as a little girl was a stark contrast to the woman she had grown into. It was a fascinating thing to her how she could remember a time like this so vividly and yet be so completely different from the child she once was. When she remembered what had happened to her since, what had occurred that shaped her into what she had become, what had changed her so much…

It was heartbreaking…

Kestrel clung to the memory tightly, not wanting to drift into darker thoughts. She remembered she was running _from_ something. Suddenly it grabbed her and picked her up, but she wasn't afraid, she was still laughing and giggling she felt the thing that grabbed her pull her close wrapping her in its arms. She felt the warmth of the embrace and heard laughter once again as the thing held her tight. It wasn't just hers anymore though; it was a different voice, this one deeper but still feminine and beautiful. This voice too was full of life and happiness. She pulled the young Kestrel in close and kissed her cheek lightly,

"Eww gross!" she remembered saying, trying to rub it off. While Kestrel was happier then,she obviously wasn't a _completely_ different person either. She couldn't help but smile a little as she thought of that. Despite what she remembered saying though, Kestrel remembered giggling as she felt the woman's lips tickled her cheek and felt the cold wetness as the wind blew in her face.

"I told you I'd catch you, silly girl." The woman's voice said playfully as she set little Kestrel down. Kestrel for some reason couldn't see this woman's face; the sun behind her had cast such a bright light that her face was undistinguishable. She stood up, showing how much taller she was than the young Kestrel.

"Let's see if you can catch me!" she said before darting off. Little Kestrel laughed again and took off after her. The woman was running slowly, with a huge gait in her steps. She was obviously doing this to give the little girl a chance. But Kestrel hadn't known that, she ran as fast as her five year old legs would propel her but still she was having a hard time catching up to the woman. But suddenly, she was beginning to close the distance, she could see the woman getting closer as she caught up to her. Kestrel stretched out her little arm, ready to tag the woman's leg as soon as she got close enough.

"I'm gonna get you mommy!"

Tears welled up in Kestrel's eyes, too strong to fight back. She couldn't take it anymore and let her emotions come out as she broke down. Tears streamed down her face and her buried half her face in the palm of her hand. She tried as hard as she could to fight back the emotions; they were a weakness, they only served to slow her down. Even alone she didn't want to look like a blubbering little girl she pressed her teeth together and lowered her head even further. Then she echoed her thoughts in her head again. Weakness? Her tears of pain were a weakness? That was what she had been taught, not to let her emotions control her, to never show her feelings.

To never show weakness…

In that instant she realized what she had become: she was once a child, full of life and happiness. Then that life was taken from her. They had trained her to serve Cyclonia, to become a weapon. They took her innocence from her. They had broken her spirit and rebuilt her as they saw fit. They took her life from her, and then they made her into a soulless blade.

They made her into what she was now.

Kestrel let her tears flow freely now, she still restrained her sobbing but did not try to force back her tears. She didn't care if they were a sign of weakness, she wanted to feel the grief, just this once, she wanted to remember what it was like to feel like this and not hide it away. She didn't want to run away from her emotions anymore, she didn't want to continuously stuff them back into her mind! She wanted to be free! She wanted to feel alive!

She wanted to be…

"Kess?"

Suddenly Kestrel snapped back into reality as she heard the familiar voice. She quickly wiped her tears away and tried to pull herself together.

"Gyr? What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I just wanted to see how you were doing," he answered. "I figured you were up here when the banging noises stopped."

They both laughed a little at that remark, but then an awkward silence fell over the two of them for a moment. Gyr decided to break the ice once again.

"So…feel better?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm doing better now." Kestrel replied, and then turned back toward the setting sun. "It wasn't too hard; I just imagined the wall was Kai's face. Instant stress relief!"

They both chuckled softly again, but Gyr didn't give an opportunity to let another awkward silence come around. "Wow that's a beautiful sunset."

"Tch! Of course it is," Kestrel replied with a grin. "Why do you think I come up here?"

"Fair enough." Gyr said with another chuckle. "Um…do you mind if I watch it too?"

"Sure, it's a free terra." Kestrel replied, gesturing at the land around her. "Pull up a rock and make yourself comfortable."

Gyr gingerly took a seat on the ground where he had been standing.

Kestrel looked at him with a puzzled expression, then smiled and shook her head. "You know, you can sit closer to me if you want, I won't bite."

"Huh?" Gyr's face started to turn red, mostly from embarrassment but also out of anxiety. "Uh…okay sure."

Slowly, Gyr pulled himself closer until he was beside Kestrel. She had kept telling him to inch closer. Gyr felt a nervous as he got closer, his cheeks turning redder and redder. Kestrel watched as he inched over and, exasperated, eventually grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him even closer until they were separated by mere centimeters. Gyr started to sweat a little; after all he was now sitting really close to Kestrel, in a very romantic setting. He started to notice the golden glow of the sun as it reflected off of her beautiful face. He saw her long, jet black hair flowing in the wind, the golden highlights dancing at the end of her hair. Her brown eyes, while usually so dark he could hardly notice the color, were illuminated by the setting sun, he could now see very distinctly the color of her eyes. They looked like a canyon lit up by the same setting sun. he felt like he could almost get lost in them. Gyr suddenly got even redder and began sweating even more profusely.

_Snap!_

Gyr broke out of his trance as Kestrel snapped her fingers in front of his face. He shook his head for a minute and blinked.

"Huh?"

"I said "are you okay?' You look like you're gonna throw up." She replied with a puzzled expression

"Uh…oh yeah! I'm okay! Don't worry!" Gyr said with a flustered tone as he looked away.

Kestrel shrugged her shoulders "Erm…okay if you say so,"

The awkward silence returned again for about a minute as the two watched the sunset even further. The sun was almost below the second cloud line, only the very top remained to peek over the edge of the clouds.

"So, what do you think about when you come up here?" Gyr asked.

Kestrel's expression indicated she was tired, not so much physically, but more mentally and emotionally, with heavy eyelids she looked at Gyr as she spoke.

"To be honest, this is probably one of the few places where I can really stop to think." She said. "Normally I'm always dealing with one thing or another, sometimes that's all I really seem to think about when I get into it, but here I can just think about…well…me."

"You mean…"Gyr began, trying to be careful about the words he chose. "…what happened before…"

Kestrel nodded tiredly

Gyr knew what must be going through Kestrel's mind, even if he didn't truly understand it. After all, they were in the same unit together when they were trained in Cyclonia, but Gyr had managed to escape long before Kestrel could. He didn't have to go through nearly as much as she had to deal with. He couldn't imagine what it must be like to carry all of those memories. All of those deaths, especially those of the ones she was close to. To go through all that pain and not want to shut yourself away from the world, if you were lucky enough to keep your sanity that is. Not many people could have done hat she did and gotten through it as well. He wanted to tell her everything was okay, that it wasn't her fault, but he knew that wasn't what she wanted to hear. It wasn't something she could believe, not right now.

"Though, I try not to think about that too much," said Kestrel. "I'd rather think about something else."

Gyr knew what she was talking about: her dream. Her driving goal that was more important to her than anything…

"Do you really think you'll find her?" he asked.

"I've got no choice," Kestrel replied, still looking at the sunset. "If I don't then it was all for nothing, and I refuse to accept that…"

Still she felt worried. Kestrel could usually see her mother's face clearly in her memories, now it seemed to be obscured, hidden from her. It was a progressive thing, but she didn't notice it until she couldn't see her face at all

.

"_Could I really be starting to forget what she looks like?" _She thought.

"She must've really been important to you…"

Kestrel let out a heavy sigh before she spoke again.

"She was," she said. Kestrel looked at the sunset, transfixed on the horizon. Somewhere out there, beyond Sky's End, her mother, the woman in her memories was out there somewhere.

"She was my light in the darkness…"

…

Kestrel woke with a yawn as her alarm clock continued to buzz. With a quick motion she slammed her fist into the snooze button and it was silenced. As she blinked the drowsiness out of her eyes she got out of bed and got dressed before exiting her room as she opened the door she stretched out her arms and arched her back.

"Morning Gyr," she said still stretching, she hadn't even opened her eyes yet before Gyr spoke. Apparently already awake.

"Hey Kess! You gotta take a look at this!" he exclaimed. Kestrel blinked as Gyr took her hand and led her to the kitchen. "I've never seen anything like it!"

"Gyr I just woke up…" she said tiredly. "What is so important that it can't wait till after…break…fast…." Kestrel's eye's almost popped out of her head.

A rather large, green bird was in their kitchen. The bird was one that Kestrel didn't recognize, but it was obviously rare, if Gyr's suddenly "morning person" attitude was any indication. But interestingly, it was at the table, greedily pecking at the food on one of the plates.

"Uh. Gyr, what's this bird doing here?" Kestrel said, growing more and more annoyed. "And more importantly, WHY IS IT EATING MY BREAKFAST?!!!!"

The bird suddenly looked up after Kestrel's outburst and cocked it's head as if it was confused, then let out an annoyed squawk before going back to eating the meat on the table. It didn't get long to enjoy it before a flying tonfa flew past it, startling the bird and causing it to hop backwards.

"GET OUT!!!!" Kestrel roared as she picked up her other tonfa and chucked it at the green bird. The bird squawked again as the weapon sailed past it and flew to the top of the cabinets.

"Kestrel what are you doing?!" Gyr cried as he restrained the fuming girl. "That's a Mynall Bird! Do you have any idea how rare they are?"

"I don't care if it's a freakin Storm Hawk!" Kestrel snapped. "That thing ate my breakfast! It'll be lucky if I don't fry it!"

"If it isn't one socially awkward teenager it's another. Doesn't anyone have any respect for an endangered species anymore?"

Kestrel and Gyr froze. "Uh Gyr, who said that?"

Suddenly, the bird dropped to the ground and suddenly became enveloped in a bright golden light. Kestrel covered her eyes with her forearm shield them from the flash. After the bright light faded, Kestrel opened her eyes.

Kestrel looked where the bird had been just a moment ago only to find a skinny, rather unusually dressed man standing there. The man's green attire seemed designed after the very bird he had (apparently) just been. Even his helmet was reminiscent of a bird's head. He also carried a strange looking staff with a yellowish crystal at the top. But what stuck out about him the most was the different shade of green in his hair, including his goatee. Another thing the man wore was a huge grin on his face, which, if Kestrel's were any indication, he was going to be trouble to say the least.

Kestrel didn't say anything, she didn't even move. It looked like she was frozen stiff. Her eyes were widened and her lips retracted back into her mouth making it appear like she wore a rather forceful grimace. So instead, Gyr was the one to break the silence.

"Sorry, but, erm…who are you?" he asked, still a little shocked that he had just seen a bird turn into a person.

The man's grin spread wider. "I'm glad you asked!" he said exuberantly. "Arygyn, world famous warrior trainer, has arrived!"

The man's quick movements and excited tone almost made Gyr jump. Kestrel however, continued to remain stiff as a board. Muffled sounds came from her mouth, as though she was trying to speak but she couldn't.

"Speechless?" said Arygyn leaning in closer to Kestrel, then moving backward again in one fluid, yet unusual movement. "Of course you are. After all it's not every day you can be in the presence of someone as unbelievably famous as me!" The man's movements were strangely feminine, but they were also very quick. Whoever he was, Gyr could tell he was clearly capable of handling hostile situations, even if his speech and strange personality didn't seem to give that kind of air about him.

Kestrel however, continued to remain frozen. Her grimace even became more pronounced and her eyes looked right they were ready to pop out of her head.

With a confused look, Arygyn turned his eyes to Gyr. "She isn't gonna faint is she?" he asked. "I always feel so embarrassed when that happens."

Then, without warning, Kestrel erupted.

"PFFFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!" Kestrel had sprung back to life , suddenly exploding with uncontrollable laughter. "Oh you…HAHA!… you gotta be kidding me!…HAHAHA! look at this reak!! HAHAHAHA!! She wrapped her arms around her stomach and continued to laugh wildly.

A startled Gyr jumped a little as Kestrel burst out laughing. Of course, he thought this Arygyn character was weird looking too, but something told him that it would be a bad idea to mess with this guy.

Naturally, Arygyn was less than amused…

"who…who dressed you?" continued Kestrel, still laughing hysterically "HAHAHAHA! I mean…what are you wearing?...HAHAHA!... GLITTERSILK?!"

Kestrel continued to laugh uncontrollably until suddenly her legs were swept out from under her as though someone had just lassoed her legs. She fell to the ground with a loud thud. It was so fast and unexpected that Kestrel had to blink a few times before she realized what had just happened. When her eyes finally focused she looked up to see Arygyn grinning mischievously.

"You done?" he said haughtily

"H-how..." began Kestrel "…did you do that?"

"Do what? Oh! You mean move my staff around?" he said lifting his staff up again. "I just hold it in my hand and make slight twist of the wrist, like so!" Arygyn made a waving motion with his staff and in an instant, Kestrel found herself on the floor again.

"AHH! Will you stop doing that?!" she shouted trying to get back up again.

"Hmph! I don't see why I should," Arygyn replied. "Especially when you're being so rude..."

"Rude? You think _I'm_ rude?" Kestrel exclaimed. "Last I checked _you_ flew in here and ATE _MY_ BREAKFAST!!"

"Oh get over it already." Arygyn rebuked. "I just flew all the way from Pathologica, I needed a little snack after all that exertion. Not that it was all that nutritious… you know how bad Sky shark fillet is for your complexion?"

Kestrel blinked. _"Pathologica? Does that mean this guy was there when I…that's impossible!" _

"I wouldn't say it's impossible, just very unlikely?" he said, suddenly appearing inched in front of Kestrel's face. As a reflex she tried to swat him away, only to have her hand hit air and Arygyn standing where he was seconds before.

"Yet, here I am."

"_What the- how did he move so fast?" _she thought, even more puzzled about this man than she was mere seconds ago_. "And how did he know what I was thinking? Can he-"_

"Read minds?" he said as he appeared close to her again, this time close to the side of her face. "Of course not, you're just easy to figure out."

Instinctively, she turned to face him in a fighting stance, but dropped it as quickly as possible, not wanting to give this Arygyn character a hint about her fighting prowess. If he did notice it however, it seemed that he didn't care.

"Okay…" began Kestrel. "So aside from stealing my food, what are you doing here in the first place?"

"Oh I just thought I'd stop by," Arygyn replied, his eyes darting around as he scanned the inside of Kestrel's home. "It's not exactly roomy, but at least you bother to clean up after yourselves, unlike _someone _I could mention."

"Hey! Focus!" Kestrel snapped, quite visibly betting more irritated. "Can you somehow bypass your ADD for a second and actually answer my question?"

Arygyn shook his head in disappointment. "Honestly, the two of you are more alike than either of you could possibly guess…no manners at all between the two of you."

"Okay WHO do you keep talking about!?" Kestrel was on the edge of her patience with this strange, effeminate man who seemed to enjoy brushing her off. But still, there was something about his words…he seemed like he knew a lot more than she had given him credit for.

At the very least, this weird man caught her interest.

At this latest question at least, Arygyn responded with a satisfied grin. "Oh you know him I'm sure; Tall, long hair, wears a lot of black, chip on his shoulder the size of a carrier."

Suddenly, Kestrel lowered her head, as if both lost in thought and completely enraged's fire seemed to vanish, replaced with cold resolve. "And his eyes?"

"Hmm?" Arygyn replied, his grin growing t large it looked like it might reach his ears.

"What color are his eyes?" she responded coldly

"If you asked that, then I think you know who it is already…"

Kestrel already knew, mostly because of the description but something else pretty much gave it away for her. The "chip on his shoulder" comment almost placed an image of him into her mind. When she first saw him, she could tell he was carrying a great burden, like a sense of guilt that almost forced him to drag his feet. She remembered seeing his pain, his sense of loss in his eyes

His dull, golden eyes…

Suddenly Kestrel sprang back into action and jumped toward Arygyn as if she was going to tackle him to the ground. The green-clad man dodged nimbly out of the way, allowing Kestrel to roll behind him.

This was what she had counted on.

As she began to rise she quickly picked up her tonfa from the floor. She then spun around to face Arygyn, revving her tonfa twice as she turned, causing a bright yellow light to encircle her for a moment before stopping in front of Arygyn, her weapons to the man's throat.

"Gyr!"

reacting with remarkable speed, Gyr launched himself from the couch and landed right behind Arygyn. He extended his right arm all the way out to his side as though he were trying to reach something. Within a second a long, pole-like object suddenly lifted itself up from its leaning position on a nearby wall and flew to Gyr's as though he had called it to his hand. as it entered his grip he spun it into an attack position, a small, crescent-shaped crystal blade shown with a dim blue light as he thrust the head of his crystal spear toward Arygyn, stopping just short of his neck.

"Where. Is. He?" Kestrel threatened, her eyes aflame with focus and determination.

"Princess, you seriously need to get a grip," replied Arygyn calmly, gripping both of Kestrel's tonfa with his index fingers and thumbs, then delicately pushed them back to her. He then turned around to Gyr. "And Sparky, you need to take a seat."

With a casual motion Arygyn aimed the head of his staff at Gyr. The crystal at the end glowed brightly and what looked like several multicolored sparks suddenly surrounded it. Suddenly, Gyr was thrust backward and he flew back until he collided with the sofa, which nearly flipped upside down with the impact before returning to its upright position, with Gyr sitting motionless on the cushions.

"Gyr!" Kestrel cried in alarm, the movement was so fast and quick she didn't realize what was happening until Gyr had hit the couch. She tried to move to help him, but Arygyn's staff blocked her way.

"He'll be fine," he said with an amused tone. "He's just going to relax over there for a minute while you and I have a little chat."

Kestrel glared angrily, looking as if she would tear this weird man's head off, but the truth was, this was the first time in awhile she actually started to feel helpless, or at least out of her league. Whoever this guy was, he could apparently shape-shift, move incredibly fast, and could knock someone away with no effort at all. As unusual as this Arygyn was, he obviously had an incredible amount of power.

"Now what's with that mean-looking face?" asked Arygyn. To Kestrel it almost sounded like he was trying to address a child. "Don't worry; it'll be good for you. The first step to working out your problems is healthy communication after all."

Kestrel let out a heavy sigh in an attempt to calm her nerves. "The only 'problem' I'm having at the moment is dealing with some glittersilk-wearing freak breaking into my place, and teasing that he apparently knows where Kai is but doesn't seem to be too interested in sharing at the moment. So tell me, do you really know where he is or are you just here to annoy me?"

Arygyn grinned again. "Oh don't worry, I know where he is. I Have to put up with his whining too you know. However, I may or may not have some information on someone else you might be wondering about as well."

Kestrel raised an eyebrow. "Uh…what are you talking about? Unless you know someone who has an even bigger bounty than Kai then there's no one else that's on my mind right now."

Arygyn shook his head, almost in disappointment. "Oh come on now, don't tell me you've gotten so wrapped up in the whole 'big tough bounty hunter' business you've forgotten why you do it in the first place."

Kestrel blinked surprisingly, she was caught off guard by Arygyn's words, and even more by how they affected her. She knew why she did her job; she remembered the goal that lay beyond the horizon, the one thing she wanted to achieve most in the world. It wasn't about the gold, it was always about what she intended to buy with it.

She could never forget that, it was the only thing that kept her going.

"How…how do you know all this?" she asked. Her head hung low, but her body was shaking with rage, her hands gripped her tonfa's handles tightly as if to squeeze the life out of them. "How do you know so much about me? Do you know about Cyclonia too? What I had to do for them? How can you possibly know all of these things about me?!"

Arygyn now looked sad. "I'm afraid so, it's my job to know these kinds of things. Nasty business with Cyclonia, especially when it was your own father who did that to you-"

"Shut…UP!!!" Kestrel looked up at him with a fury that could kill, but tears were already starting to well up in her eyes. "I don't need your pity! And I definitely don't need you bringing up my past! It isn't any of your business!!"

"Actually it _is_ my business," Arygyn replied. "You may not realize it yet, but you're meant for greater things than scrounging up gold by doing odd jobs for the Sky Council. Why do you think I'm here in the first place? To teach you something; to put you on the right path to fulfilling what you are meant to do."

"So now you're trying to give me a lecture?" Kestrel replied with annoyance. "I don't care why you're here, I don't care how you know so much about me, and I don't care why or how you know Kai. The only thing I care about is catching him. If you're going to tell me where he is then do it! If not then leave me alone."

Arygyn sighed. "So you still won't listen huh? Fine, I'll tell you what you want to know, but only _if_ you pass a little test of mine."

"No more games!" Kestrel snapped. "Just be straightforward for once and tell me-"

"Too late!" A sudden flash lit up the room. It was so bright Kestrel couldn't see anything but an endless void of white. Then suddenly she felt as though she were being moved around, in the sense that she was standing still while the world seemed to be rearranging itself. As soon as the blinding light faded, Kestrel rubbed her eyes, expecting to see Arygyn in front of her. Instead she saw something that she did not expect.

Instead of her small home within the waterfall on Amazonia, Kestrel found herself in a huge coliseum. The structure was massive; the empty spectator seats looked like they could almost touch the sky and the completely encircled her. To her left however, there were several tower-like structures that looked like huge golden fangs jutting up from the ground. And between them was a long, yellow runway than extended all the way from where she was standing to the edge of the terra.

"Uh…where am I?" she asked aloud.

"It looks like we're on Terra Rex, if this huge arena is any indication."

Kestrel turned around to the familiar voice and saw Gyr behind her. Only he was inside a tunnel under the seats with a steel cage door in front of him.

"Gyr!" Kestrel cried as she ran to the entrance tunnel. "You okay?"

"So far," he replied. "But I still can't figure out how we got from Amazonia to Rex in less than a second."

"My guess is Glittersilk is involved." Kestrel said as she tried to kick the cage door, loose, which apparently served to purpose other than making her foot hurt.

"Geez! This thing is solid…" Kestrel said. She pulled her tonfa from her belt and revved the handles, bringing their bright yellow light back. She hit the door again using the shaft of her tonfa like batons as she slammed them against the cage. But once again, the attack seemed to have little effect if any at all.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you,"

Kestrel turned around to see Arygyn standing in the circle she had been in earlier. She shot him an irritated glare before asking "Why not?"

"I made sure you couldn't do any real damage to it," he replied. "I pulled a few strings so we could have the whole place to ourselves, a nice perk for being famous an all, and the last thing I needed is for those code-obsessed tightwads to make me pay some 'dishonorable damages' fine or whatever it was they called it…I wasn't really paying attention."

"Ok fine, you got me here, so what do you want?" Kestrel asked.

"Isn't it obvious, I want to see what you're made of," Arygyn said with an impish grin. "Just a test to see if you have what it takes to beat Kai. That is what you want isn't it."

"No I want you to TELL ME WHERE HE IS!!" Kestrel shouted angrily. "All you've done is beat around the bush about it. You never give a straight answer! Besides, I don't need to prove to you that I can beat Kai. I already know I can!"

"Hmph, that I'll judge for myself." Arygyn said. Then his smile shifted from one of mischief into one of boundless confidence. "Let's see how you do against me first. If you can impress me, then I'll be glad to tell you where you can find him."

"Careful Kess…" Gyr said. "This guy's not what he seems.

Kestrel nudged her head to the side, but didn't directly turn to see Gyr for fear of losing sight of her opponent "I got it Gyr," she replied calmly. "This won't take long."

Kestrel was suddenly off like a rocket toward her opponent, charging wildly like a mad boghowler. As she neared her opponent she pulled her right arm back preparing to strike the head.

"HOW DO YOU LIKE THIS GLITTERSILK?" she shouted as she swung her tonfa toward her opponent. She saw what looked like Arygyn's grin spreading wider followed by a blurred movement as she brought her arm forward for the attack. Before her hand had reached its intended target, the blur moved to her right and she hit nothing but air. As she recoiled from the missed strike she felt something hit the top of her head with a soft _thunk!_

"OW!" she cried out as she rubbed the top of her head. She saw Arygyn to her right, his staff resting just over her head. "What was that?!"

"My counterattack, what do you think?" he said jokingly. "So far, so boring princess, anyone can rush in blindly you know?"

Kestrel responded by dropping to her knees and spinning herself around, extending her leg for a sweeping kick. Despite her speed, Arygyn jumped over it gingerly like a child playing hopscotch and responded with another irritating strike to Kestrel's head.

"Gah! Stop doing that?!" she growled.

"How about you stop with the kiddy stuff and show me what you can really do?" Arygyn replied confidently. "For someone so mouthy, you sure aren't very interesting."

"_Wow, this guy's definitely no pushover," _Kestrel thought. _"Ok, no more fooling around. If I wanna beat this guy I'm going to have to turn it up…"_

Instead of attacking again, Kestrel went into reverse, trying to put some distance between her and her opponent. Once she felt she was a good distance away, and saw that Arygyn hadn't tried to pursue her, Kestrel dropped her stance and closed her eyes. Yet despite her meditative state, the anger never left her face.

"You know, you've got a messed up notion of fair play pal…" Kestrel opened her eyes, now green instead of brown.

"…and it's beginning to piss me off!!"

Kestrel exploded forth, leaping from the air with speed unlike anything she had shown. The power of her Falconsight propelled her from her spot. Her running speed was at least twice as fast as before. She then jumped into the air, leaping almost inhumanly high. The intensity of the moment made it seem as though she was hovering in the air for a moment, then she tucked and flipped midair to maximize wind resistance as she landed gracefully mere inches from her opponent. But that wasn't the end of it. As soon as she landed, she crouched and spun again as though she were going to try the leg sweep again, as she turned however her leg thrust up instead, becoming a rising roundhouse kick. Though she half-expected Arygyn to move again, she felt as her kick made contact. Arygyn's head flew back, his helmet flying off of his head and tumbled on the ground before coming to a stop.

"Wha…Did she… hit him?"

Gyr, Who had been watching from behind the closed entrance tunnel, suddenly found his attention focused as he saw what had just happened. Kestrel's opponent had been toying with her up until this point, but once Kestrel had resorted to using her Falconsight, suddenly the fight had turned to her favor? He didn't understand how, but knew that while Arygyn seemed powerful, Kestrel wasn't your everyday fighter either.

Kestrel's torturous training at the hands of her father resulted in her lower body to be incredibly strong, allowing her to move faster, jump higher, and perform complex acrobatics in midair that most people would never be able to do because their reflexes weren't fast enough to pull them off in mid-flight.

Not to mention she could kick like a Blizzarian…

Gyr shuddered just by thinking what kind of damage Kestrel probably had done to Arygyn's face after receiving that blow. But after holding the recoiled position for a few seconds, Arygyn's head snapped back and he stood there grinning as usual.

"Oooh so close," he said. "At least you managed to knock my helmet off. That's something, I guess…"

Kestrel's eyes were wide with shock, both from realizing her kick had only managed to knick his helmet, and from seeing his spiky green hair sticking up like some sort of feathered crest.

"You really should stop staring," Arygyn said, clearly amused. "It makes you look ridiculous. I doubt you'd want Kai to see you like that after all."

Instantly Kestrel shook her stasis off and went on the offensive again, her speed still augmented by Falconsight. But just as before, with every strike, Arygyn dodged and tapped Kestrel on the head as a result. Despite her attempts, she was still not making any progress.

"It can't be," said Gyr. "This guy's still way faster than Kestrel when she's using Falconsight? Who…or_ what_ is he?"

After numerous attempted strikes, and subsequent light strikes to the top of her head, Kestrel stopped. She rubbed the top of her head, where the pain, while minimal, throbbed annoyingly. She could also feel a bump beginning to form as well.

"Come on, you're still holding back" said Arygyn, tapping her again

"What are you talking about? I'm giving you my all!" she shouted in reply. "If you're so strong why don't you do something else besides dodge?"

Arygyn shrugged "Okay, if that's what you want…"

In an almost instantaneous motion, Arygyn flipped his staff around until the head was facing Kestrel. In the same instant, Kestrel suddenly felt like she had just been hit by a runaway skimmer. I powerful blast hit her squarely in the stomach and sent her flying backwards. she flew so far back she crashed into one of the walls with a loud smack, Then…

_Crack!!_

Kestrel then fell to the ground face first and motionless..

Her body was lifeless, but she was still breathing. Gyr could see that the blow knocked her cold, and judging by the loud crack he heard, something must've broken as well. Considering how hard she hit the wall and what her position was, Gyr guessed it was an arm or shoulder bone, but it could have also been her spine, or worse…

Arygyn meanwhile simply stood there as though he were waiting. "Hmm…did more damage than I thought," he said. "I hope it doesn't take too long, I've got other places to be."

"What are you talking about?" Gyr asked. "You beat her! She's out cold! Just let us go already!"

"Oh don't try to cover up for her," Arygyn said, his grin spreading across his face. "I know a lot more about her than just her past you know, I also know her little _secret_…"

Gyr wore a look of shock. "What…but how could you…?

Suddenly, Kestrel's body seemed to be moving. She was twitching for a moment, but then began to push herself up. In no time she was standing again, but her eyes were their normal brown instead of bright green, indicating that her Falconsight was gone.

"Oh! Good timing!" Arygyn said excitedly. "And it only took about five minutes too, not bad at all!"

Kestrel rolled her shoulder. "Tch! I didn't think you'd actually try to kill me."

"Who said I was trying to do that?" Arygyn replied. "But you're right, that blow broke your neck as well as your sternum. If a normal person went through that they would be dead, or at least permanently paralyzed. Yet _you_ don't look like you're hurt at all now."

Kestrel's eyes widened. "Wait…so you knew the whole time?"

"Of course!" said Arygyn, brimming with excitement. "I also know you have to be asleep or unconscious for it to work, but you recovered from all that damage in almost no time, which means, that you aren't like most."

He then appeared directly in front of Kestrel and leaned over to her ear. "Which also means, you weren't 'giving it your all' before." He whispered, followed by a small chuckle.

Kestrel maintained a focused expression. This was the strongest opponent she had ever faced; not only was he incredibly powerful in his own right, but seemed to know everything about her.

Did that mean he knew about _that_ as well?

"Well, cat's out of the bag now," Arygyn said. "You might as well show me, it's really the only chance you have at winning anyway right?"

Kestrel sighed. "Do I have to?"

"Um…yes."

Kestrel crossed her arms and looked down at the ground on her side. She hated resorting to _that_. She had hoped to be able to use it to defeat Kai and then not have to use it again. But it was obvious that it was there to deal with her most powerful opponents, whon she couldn't defeat through her usual means

This guy was one of those opponents

"You know, I wanted to save this for Kai," she stated. "But I guess if you really want to see it, then I guess I have no choice…"

Kestrel narrowed her eyes at her opponent, then closed them as though she were going to use Falconsight again, but this time things were different.

She suddenly opened her eyes and mouth as wide as she could.

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" her scream was like a hardened warrior's battle cry. It echoed through the stadium and beyond the seats, spreading across the terra. the ground began to quake, the rubble from where Kestrel had slammed into the wall began to move erratically as though it had a mind of its own. Kestrel's long, fine hair began to stand up as though she were standing under an updraft of wind. The small, blond highlights and the ends of her hair suddenly began to grow bigger and spread, flowing down her hair to her crown. The irises of her eyes began to become lighter, changing from a dark brown to different shades of blue. Then, an aura of white flames silhouetted her body, flowing gracefully like fire burning in slow motion. Suddenly the white flames engulfed her body, dancing wildly around her. Then the light suddenly erupted into a brilliant flash so great it covered the entire stadium. It was much like the flash Arygyn had produced earlier, but this one was warm, almost soothing, but still had the intensity of an inferno. The light lasted for a few minutes, then eventually faded until there was only Arygyn and Kestrel in the ring.

But this time Kestrel wasn't like before…

Her body was glowing, as though there were a light coming from inside her body. Her hair, which had been jet black with blond highlighted tips was now completely golden blond and like her body, glowed brightly. Her eyes, which had been brown were now electric blue. But what stood out most were the large, white, feathered wings that had apparently sprouted from her back. Like the rest of her body, they glowed as well, almost as though the wings were made of light.

"_Well, what do you say now_?"

as she spoke, Kestrel's voice sounded different as well; it sounded as though her voice had an echo, but it came before she spoke rather than after. It also sounded as though she had another voice overlapping her own, it sounded similar to her own, but at the same time seemed to be of a person who was wiser and carried the weight of experience.

Arygyn was silent for a second, but then suddenly bust with excitement. "Oh! Now THAT'S what I was looking for! And may I say you make an absolutely _gorgeous _blond! And the wings! You look just like a little angel! How pretty!"

Kestrel lowered her head, and then grinned.

"Oh, you're _so_ dead…"

Kestrel took off! Bursting forth even faster than before and nailed Arygyn squarely in the stomach. He flew back meeting the wall just as Kestrel had done a minute ago.

But it wasn't over yet…

Kestrel charged again, her wings allowing her to lift off of the ground and charge completely in the air. She grabbed Arygyn by the cuffs of his clothing. He wore a grin and didn't seem to be harmed. His smile irritated Kestrel as she lifted him up into the air then let him come back down, only to give him a spinning back kick, sending him flying into the other side of the stadium. He hit the wall just as he had before, but before he could fall off, Kestrel had propelled herself to him and socked him right in the gut. She then proceeded to deliver several blows of unmatched speed to her opponent. Her movements were incredibly fast, so much so it was almost impossible to keep up with her movements. All the while however, Arygyn didn't make any sound or other movement other than to continue to wear his annoying grin on his face.

Kestrel, fed up with Arygyn decided to finish the fight before he could retaliate. She started by backing off a few feet from Arygyn, who hung motionless on the wall in the impact crated Kestrel had created with her attacks.

Kestrel crossed her arms over her chest in an "x" pattern. Electricity began to suddenly spark all over her arms, the miniature lightning blots dancing across her arms and hands.

"Let's see if you're still smiling after this**!"** Kestrel then grinned wickedly before unleashing her attack

"Storm Strike!!"

As she put her arms forward, the lighting erupted from her arms toward her opponent. The electricity surged through Arygyn, making his body jump and twitch involuntarily as it did so. Yet still, Arygyn did not scream in pain, but continued to grin childishly. Once Kestrel's attack had ceased, Arygyn fell to the ground, hid body seemingly limp and motionless. Kestrel decided to end it once and for all and struck the wall where he had been a second ago. Her power allowed her to easily turn some of the wall into large chunks of rubble which fell onto her fallen opponent. After the dust cleared, there was a pile of rubble lying where Arygyn had been. He had been buried by the falling rubble.

Now finally feeling like it was over, Kestrel deactivated her power; her wings disappeared like dying flames and her glowing aura disspiated. Her hair and eye color however, did not revert back. She took a handful of her hair and brought it to her face, seeing how it had turned completely blond. _"Ugh, I hate this part…all of these stupid side-effects…"_

She turned to Gyr, whom she had still expected to be in the tunnel, but who was in fact now in the arena waking towards her.

"Hey! How did you manage to get out of there?" Kestrel asked, her voice having returned to normal

"When you started shaking up the place, I guess it affected something sensitive, or maybe you knocked him unconscious or something, either way the cage door opened on its own shortly before the fight ended."

"Well lucky for you I guess," Kestrel said with a chuckle. "You know you really need to stop getting yourself in situations like that, it kind of makes _you_ look like the damsel in distress."

"Thank you…Kestrel…" Gyr gave her an annoyed look, which naturally didn't seem to faze her. He then looked past her to the debris pile. "What are you going to do about him? He sent us here. How are we going to get back?"

"Oh…crap." Kestrel said, embarrassed. "I think I went a little overboard. I doubt he's dead but he's probably gonna be out for awhile."

"Oh I wouldn't say that…"

Both Kestrel and Gyr gasped. Suddenly the rubble pile moved and then Arygyn sprung out from under it. He brushed the dust from his shoulders, but otherwise didn't look injured at all. "Gotta say, not too shabby, that was worth a gold star or two at least."

Kestrel stood there, mouth agape. "But…but how? I gave you everything I had and you don't even have a scratch!"

"Looks can be deceiving, princess." Arygyn replied, cracking his neck. "I think I'm going to have a neck ache for day or two after that."

Kestrel looked dumbstruck. _"Just…a neck ache??"_

"So it's true that you have some of the Aurora stone's power after all." Arygyn said. "That little shard they stuck in your body sure packs a punch. Not to mention its a lot nicer to look at than Kai's powers…"

"Well I guess I should be surprised you know about that too," Kestrel replied with a sigh. "But somehow, nothing about you surprised me anymore."

"Trust me princess, you haven't seen anything yet…" Arygyn's said with a playful smirk.

"Look would you stop calling me pri-?"

Arygyn made another waving motion with his staff and with another flash, Kestrel, Gyr and Arygyn were back on Terra Amazonia in Kestrel's home.

"_Ugh…I don't know how much more of this oversized bucket of weird I can take…"_

"Uh…what about Terra Rex's prized arena?" Gyr asked. "You two completely trashed it."

"Oh don't worry about that." Arygyn replied. "I fixed everything before we left. It was like we were never there."

"But, you said before that-"

"Oh that? Psh I just couldn't think of a better joke at the time." Arygyn smiled innocently.

After that, Gyr, Kestrel, and Arygyn were silent for a few seconds before the ice was broken again.

"Whew that was fun!" said Arygyn. "Not to mention you managed to impress me somewhat."

"So you'll tell me where Kai is now?" Kestrel asked impatiently.

"Well…there's a slight problem with that…"Arygyn said hesitantly.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" Kestrel exploded, her patience had finally reached its end. "I HAD TO GO THROUGH ALL THAT USELESS CRAP AND YOU WON'T EVEN TELL ME WHERE HE IS AFTER YOU SAID YOU WOULD?! I'LL RIP YOU IN HALF YOU GLITTERSILK WEARING-"

"Would you be a dear and go sit down for me?" Arygyn said, waving his hand slowly as he said the words. Instantly, Kestrel stopped shouting and moved to the couch, obediently sitting down without a word.

"What the.." she said, apparently coming out of the trance she had been in a moment ago. Then a startled realization swept over her. "Wait, don't tell me you know about-"

"Sit there, and don't say a word until I say you can." Arygyn cut her off, waving his hand again. Immediately Kestrel stopped talking and sat quietly.

"It can't be…" Gyr said, clearly frightened by this man's apparent profound knowledge. "You know Kestrel's trigger too?"

"Oh, you mean that little thingy that makes her do whatever I say? Yeah I know that too…" Arygyn grinned widely. "Like I said before, it's my job to know these things." He turned to Kestrel. "Ok kiddo, you can talk again if you want."

"Kestrel didn't waste time letting her voice be heard. "You knew about my conditional response trigger. You could have used it anytime…"

"That about sums it up." Arygyn said, then his grin faded. "I also know about the _other _one but even I wouldn't be that cruel. But being able to make you do whatever I say sure does come in handy."

Kestrel was puzzled. "Then, why didn't you just force me to listen to you earlier?"

"Why do you think?" Arygyn answered. "If I did that, then the message wouldn't sink in. It would be like telling a 5 year old how the Sky Council's legislation works… in one ear and out the other."

Arygyn walked closer toward her, and then leaned casually on his staff. "Besides, I told you I wanted to test you didn't I?"

"Okay, so you tested me I guess," said Kestrel. "So now what?"

"Ah yes, well here's what I meant when I said there was a problem with me telling you where Kai is." Arygyn began. "I could easily tell you where he is now, but…"

"But what?" Asked Kestrel.

"Well, Kai hasn't exactly been sitting around twiddling his thumbs you know." Arygyn answered. "

The last time you met Kai, you no doubt saw what he could do, what with the shadow crystal and all…"

"The…shadow crystal?" Kestrel asked confused.

"Of course! You didn't think it was natural did you?"

Kestrel turned so he couldn't see her face turning red with embarrassment…

"Yes indeed, Kai has approximately one third of that crystal's original power, I'm sure you can guess where the other two thirds are…"

"All too well…" Kestrel replied, remembering who else she had seen wielding a similar power, someone she hated even more than Kai. And that was saying a lot.

"And while he has one third of that powerful crystal's power, the Aurora stone's power is one of the best counters for it. The problem is, that little shard you have, only carries about one sixteenth of the complete stone's power at best…"

"_One sixteenth?!" _Kestrel's heart sank. "So you're telling me if I fought Kai…"

"He'd probably quite literally wipe the floor with you…" Arygyn said with another smirk. "Kai hasn't completely mastered the power he has yet, but he's learned to control his powers better than you have your own."

Kestrel slumped into the couch. After all she had gone through, all she had suffered; she still didn't have enough power to defeat Kai. She felt like she might as well kiss her dream goodbye…

"Kess?" Gyr asked, worried.

"It's done…" she said solemnly. "He has more power than me…there's nothing we can do…"

"Come on now don't get so down on yourself!" Arygyn interrupted. "I just told you the bad news, but there's good news too!"

"You know someone else with an even bigger bounty than Kai?" said Kestrel, still crestfallen.

"Nope, but I know a way you can get even more of the Aurora stone's power so you _could_ be a match for Kai."

"That's impossible," Kestrel stated. "the surgery that was used to put the shard in my body was performed by my father, he was the only one who could do it successfully, but he was executed by Cyclonis. even if he were still alive, I only got one shard because that was all my body could handle…"

"Oh phooey!" Arygyn scoffed. "Your friend over there has three shards in him but he doesn't have the kind of power you have. Besides you can get stronger without going under the knife, trust me."

"Gyr's powers are incredibly unstable," she retorted, pointing to her subject. "Every time he uses them he loses his memory!"

"Do you really have to mention that to _everyone...?"_ Gyr mumbled, but no one seemed to pay him any mind

"But does he grow wings when us uses it?" Arygyn asked, leaning in.

"Well…no, but."

"Neither does the other one, right?"

"No…"

"So what does that tell you?"

"I don't know…"

"Exactly!" Arygyn exclaimed. "You don't know! The Aurora stone's power can't simply be measured and put in a Petri dish to study! Heck, the Sky Council still thinks their Aurora stone was the entire thing! Yet, you found another one almost exactly like it on Terra Luminous didn't you? Face it, there's more to this, and you, than you understand."

Kestrel didn't reply, instead she was lost in thought; could he be right? Was there really a way for her to gain enough power to defeat Kai?

"You're serious about this?" she asked. "You know a way?"

"You betcha!" Arygyn said excitedly. "Of course, this is for you only; the others won't be able to benefit from this."

"Why not?" Kestrel and Gyr asked simultaneously.

Arygyn smirked. "You'll find out soon, I promise. You may even find out more about _another _special someone, but you won't know until you go looking." He then turned his back to them. "I took the liberty of marking the place where you need to go on your sky map over there. It'll take you to an uncharted terra, so you might want to be prepared before you go."

Kestrel and Gyr looked over at their miniature sky map framed on their wall. In the corner, near the Atmosian borders, there was a large black X along with a small set of coordinates above it."

"When did you…? Oh forget it! At this point I just don't care…"

"That's the spirit!" Arygyn said jokingly, even pumping his arm with enthusiasm to add fuel to the fire. "Well I'd better be off now. Places to be, people to lecture…"

"He opened the door and walked out. "Oh by the way, you should keep your hair and eyes like that! Makes you look drop-dead gorgeous!"

Kestrel glared, but Arygyn had already transformed into the green bird and gave one final squawk before flying past the waterfall and eventually beyond the terra.

"Grr..that glittersilk wearing idiot!" Kestrel grumbled. "That's exactly why I _hate_ looking like this. Everyone thinks I'm sooo much better looking or something. Like I didn't look good before just because I wasn't blond? Geez! Can you believe how shallow and superficial people can be Gyr?"

Gyr looked as though he were in a trance, as if he were mesmerized as Kestrel looked at him, then he suddenly snapped back into reality once he realized she was talking to him.

"Err…sorry, what were you saying again…? Heheh" he laughed nervously.

"Gyrrrrrrr...!" Kestrel growled, her fury growing by the second.

"Wait a second, let's not be too hasty here…" Gyr said fearfully. "It's not that you _weren't_ beautiful before or anything like that, its just that-"

"I'M GONNA KILL YOU!!!!!" Kestrel spent the next five minutes throwing various objects at Gyr, including her fists. Unfortunately for him, her skill allowed most of them to hit him squarely in the face.

"_I'll say it before, and I say it again…" _He thought, dismally while trying to dodge Kestrel's fury-enhanced attacks.

"_Women…"_

Ok so that's it for Chapter 4! Geez I can't believe it took be the whole summer to write ONE CHAPTER…:'( This one gave me some trouble mainly because it involved Arygyn. I tried to capture his personality from the show as much as possible while still making him believable as a written character. This chapter was also kind of boring too at first. Not sure why, but at least it finally got finished! I know Gyr didn't get that much dialogue in, but that's mainly because he was staring at Kestrel after the battle lol. Speaking of which, Kestrel's powers were NOT meant to be a direct opposition to Kai's powers. I had originally planned for something totally different, but when I saw the show for the 1st time it seemed like an even better idea to use the Aurora stone, especially since Kestrel is the last kind of girl you would think of as an "angel." Well I've rambled on long enough, if anyone has any other questions please let me know in either reviews or PMs and I'll get back to them when I can.

Also, I'm gonna try a new technique in writing chapters so the next one might take a little while to come out (hopefully not as long as this one ) but the plus side is it will help me to make weekly updates again! YAY!

Laterz!


	5. Chapter 5: illumination

Fighting Wings Chapter 5: Illumination

A/N: Hey all! This new chapter will hopefully start moving my story along. Like the last one, it will delve into Kestrel's back-story a little bit. It will talk about more of her origins than her past with Cyclonia, and we also get to see just how deep Kestrel's story goes. Also I'm introducing one of my two original Terras, which is also important for this story and stories to come. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Storm Hawks: said show is owned by Nerd Corps Entertainment and Asaph "Ace" Fipke. And of course, as you all know, I do in fact, own Kestrel, Gyr, Hiero, and this story…so there you go.

Many thanks go out to RGZ Archer for shamelessly advertising Fighting Wings on his own story Winds of Change, for free even. So go and read his story already! I know some of you TDT readers would like it. :D

"Vergil" is the property of RGZ archer

"You having trouble back there Gyr?" Kestrel shouted over the wind.

"Oh yeah!" Gyr shouted back, his skimmer sputtering and swerving in the air as he tried to respond, "Everything's fan-freaking-tastic on my end…"

Kestrel and Gyr, heeding the Advice of the glittersilk-clad circus performer (By Kestrel's analysis) known as Arygyn, had been following the coordinates he had given them to a supposedly uncharted terra (they had decided to go the day after so Kestrel could sleep and restore her hair and eyes to their original form). The pair had been flying for days already and both they and their skimmers were showing the telltale signs of fatigue. Kestrel's modified skimmer was still performing adequately despite the long journey; she made sure her personal skimmer was constantly modified and maintained with recent parts. Gyr on the other hand, was riding a hand-me-down skimmer that Kestrel hadn't even touched in years; it was even older than the skimmer she had lost to Kai four years ago. Most of the parts were either outdated or worn out and the crystals severely needed changing, but to Kestrel's surprise, it held out pretty well for being so beat up, mainly because they had to stop once or twice to make repairs on it so it would actually continue to fly…

"I thought you said you were going to trade this piece of junk in," said Gyr "Or junk it or something!

"Why? It's doing ok…" Kestrel said, even as she saw Gyr's skimmer flailing through the air. "Ok, so the maintenance isn't exactly up to speed… it got you here didn't it?"

"Yeah it did," replied Gyr. "The thing is, I'm still in the air and I really, REALLY don't want to continue to be if this thing suddenly decides to break down. So can we land somewhere to check on it at least?"

"There's no time," Kestrel answered. "Besides, we're almost there, I'm sure it will hold out until we get there, it was always reliable in a tight spot."

"Yeah…that's another thing I was gonna mention…" Gyr said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously, knowing Kestrel wasn't going to take the following well. "I've been looking over the coordinates that Arygyn guy put on our map and…"

"And what?" asked Kestrel, in a tone that implied she didn't really want to hear the answer, but asked anyway.

"Well…according to the map, we should technically already be there, or at least close enough to see it…"

Kestrel raised an eyebrow at this statement; wherever they were, Kestrel could see in the distance what looked like Sky's End, and last time she checked the map, the coordinates were a modest distance from the Atmosian borders. That meant that Gyr was right, they were apparently where they were supposed to be.

But there was no terra in sight…

For a moment, the two remained silent and still, the only sounds were the humming and sputtering of their respective skimmers and the wind whistling around their heads.

Then…

"THAT CHEAP, WORTHLESS, GLITTERSILK WEARING, SASHAYING FREAK LIED TO US!!!!!!!!"

"Woah woah! Calm Down!" Gyr exclaimed. "I'm sure there's some other explanation…"

"Well if you HAVE one, do you feel like sharing?!" Kestrel fumed.

"Well, maybe we read the map wrong," Gyr suggested, trying to find the right thing to say to keep Kestrel from exploding. "Or maybe we didn't follow the coordinates right."

"Well then…wouldn't that be YOUR fault then?" Kestrel retorted. "You're in charge of the map right?"

"Look, I was just making a suggestion," Gyr replied flatly, becoming irritated himself. "Anyway, I just checked the map and unless we went completely the wrong way we should…hang on."

"What?" Kestrel asked anxiously, obviously hoping they wouldn't have to fly all the way to the other side of Atmos.

"It's weird…" Gyr continued. "I didn't notice this writing before until now…"

Gyr jumped a little as he heard Kestrel's skimmer pull up beside his in what seemed like an instant and snatched the map away from his grasp.

"_Ok…_how_ does she do that?" _he thought.

Kestrel took the map in her hand and scanned it until she came upon the coordinates and the X on the map. This time however, there _was_ something different on the map.

Near the bottom left corner, right under the X, there was a message, no doubt left by Arygyn, written there. Like Gyr, Kestrel hadn't noticed this writing the last time she had looked before; it just seemed to appear out of nowhere. The message itself was one simple sentence.

_Look once, and then look again._

"Okaaaaaaay…" Kestrel said, "I guess should've expected as much from Glittersilk…"

"I guess it means we are supposed to look at the place where the coordinates are…then look again?" Gyr asked.

"No…" Kestrel replied, still thinking about the seemingly ridiculous message. "Glittersilk may be a nut job, but he never did things, even random things, without a reason. If he did write this, it wasn't simply to annoy us…"

"So…what does that mean?" Gyr asked, even more confused.

"It means," answered Kestrel. "That this means something else, we don't just look at the map again, we have to look at something else. And if I had to guess, we have to actually look at the spot where these coordinates indicate."

"Maybe you're over-thinking this a little." Gyr responded, still struggling to control his oldfangled skimmer. "I mean, we're supposed to just look at the spot a terra is supposed to be, then turn away and look again? That doesn't make any sense! How could a terra be not there one minute and be there the next?"

"You have any other ideas?" Kestrel asked rhetorically.

"Well…no."

"Then we'll just have to give it a try." Kestrel rolled the map back up and tossed it back to Gyr. She then pointed at the mass of clouds below them. "The Terra is supposed to be right here right?"

"Around that area, yeah?" Gyr replied, unrolling the map and checking it again to make sure.

Ok let's see…" Kestrel promptly turned away, looking back at Gyr, who for the most part, appeared exasperated.

"There's no way this is going to work…"

"Gyr just shut up for a minute!" Kestrel snapped. She closed her eyes and turned her head forward. _"Come on, please work…" _ Her heart racing, Kestrel opened her eyes slowly, her vision taking in the light and the colors of the scene beneath her before finally focusing on her target.

…Nothing.

Kestrel let out a sigh of both frustration and utter disappointment; she was sure that something would have been there, there had to have been. But she simply saw the same mass of clouds that were there before…

"Sorry Kess…" Gyr said. "I guess he did fool us after all."

Kestrel shook her head solemnly and readied her skimmer to move again, all the while eyeing the clouds that never seemed to change.

"...Wait…"

"What?" Gyr asked.

"The clouds," she responded. "Look at them."

Gyr eyed the same area as Kestrel. "What? They're just clouds…"

"Yeah, but _look _at them," she insisted. "Pay attention to those clouds in particular."

Gyr, still unsure of what she meant, looked at the clouds Kestrel was talking about. They didn't seem out of the ordinary to him, in fact, with all the other clouds around, he wasn't entirely sure he was looking at what Kestrel had indicated.

Then, something caught his eye.

While there were many clouds in the area, and therefore a passerby would find nothing significant, upon closer inspection, Gyr saw one cloud that seemed to be getting smaller as the wind carried it. The large, fluffy cloud was reduced to a small, almost cirrus cloud, at least in size, in the course on only a few seconds. But something was different about it.

"You see it right?" asked Kestrel. "That cloud's not just disappearing; it's going somewhere we can't see."

"But it looks like it's going into nothing…" Gyr replied.

"No it's not 'nothing'…" said Kestrel, clearly a little confused herself, but still having more of a notion as to the cause than Gyr. "I may have an idea of what it is though."

"What?"

"If I'm right, then Glittersilk's little note actually makes sense." She replied. "Hang on, I'm gonna try something."

Remembering the words on the map, Kestrel took another look at the area, she saw that the cloud was now almost completely gone, with only a small sliver of it left, until it too seemed to vanish. Kestrel grinned, and closed her eyes.

"Here we go."

Kestrel opened her eyes again, now the bright green color which trademarked her Falconsight. Without hesitation she looked at the spot once again.

If it was possible for her jaw to drop until it hit the Wastelands, it would have done so right then and there.

Where once there had been simply sky and clouds, now stood a massive terra, one unlike anything she had ever seen. The terra looked a lot like Amazonia, at least initially but the main difference was its sheer size. This terra was huge, not quite the size of Terra Cyclonia, but easily larger than most of the central terras combined. While there were a lot of forested areas, there were also a few large mountains that separated the forest from the rest of the terra. Like Amazonia, the terra wasn't flat; it had many ascending and descending levels of land upon it, though Kestrel could not see beyond the frontal view she had, she knew that there was far more to this terra than a simple rainforest.

"What is it?" asked Gyr, obviously concerned by Kestrel's gaping mouth and bulging eyes. His words caught her attention and she snapped back to him.

"Gyr…" she began, almost as if in a daze. The truth was she was completely enthralled in the vision of the terra before her.

Not just because of how beautiful it was, but because somehow…

Somehow it was familiar to her…

Suddenly, Kestrel revved the throttle of her skimmer and took off in the terra's direction

"Hurry up!" she screamed, as though in desperation. Gyr was left in shock for a moment before coming to his senses.

"Hey! Wait a second!" he shouted back as he revved his skimmer, hearing it sputter as he slammed the accelerator to follow his friend. All the while his broken-down vehicle swerved and dipped as he tried to fly it on Kestrel's path. Kestrel was flying as though she were insane. She pushed her accelerator to its limits, her gaze fixed on the terra. She didn't think about the consequences. But she didn't care. She wanted to see this place. She wanted to know why it called to her so, why it was so familiar.

Gyr struggles to keep up her superior skimmer, but she only got further and further away as she flew, tearing through the sky like an incoming missile. It was then as Gyr saw Kestrel starting to become little more than a speck amidst the jagged peaks that made up the borders of Atmos that something else began to catch his eye. It was such a subtle thing at first he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Then it became more pronounced. A strange shimmer larger than a terra, now lay in front of him. It was more of an outline that shone in dim colors of reds, yellows and blues, like the miniature rainbows you see in water when it is being sprayed outward on a sunny day. As he got closer however, he saw what looked like the outline of a giant egg shape form around this rainbow border. Within the confines of this outline, the colors inside the egg shape began to twist and convulse, giving the effect of light bending around an object.

That's when Gyr realized what he was seeing…

"It's a shield…" Gyr concluded. "…must be some kind of field that cloaks something, to protect it."

It explained why Kestrel was able to see something when he couldn't; her Falconsight allowed her to see in different spectrums of light. Cloaking fields, illusions, none of these things were invisible to her. Obviously she had seen what was on the other side of this field.

"But if it's a shield…" Gyr said to himself. Then he leapt into a panic. "Oh no… Kestrel wait! STOP!!"

Kestrel did not stop; she was too far away to hear Gyr's shouts of warning, and even if she could have she didn't care. It was as if her conscious mind had suddenly shut down for a moment. She seemed like she was acting solely on instinct. She could see the terra becoming larger as she got closer. She had to make it there; she had to know why it seemed so familiar to her. In the back of her mind she knew that the terra was somehow concealed from the naked eye. But once again her mind didn't dwell on the possibility that the terra was shielded.

Kestrel was extremely close to the barrier now, Gyr knew that this terra was protected, but no matter what he did, he could not get through to Kestrel. She had a singular goal, a resolve that this terra had somehow triggered in her mind. She couldn't be stopped.

He only hoped that it didn't lead to her death…

"Come on Kess…" he said quietly to himself. "Please stop before you hit that shield…you've gotta know it's there…"

But she didn't stop, even as she was mere seconds from meeting the barrier, the seconds ticked away slowly in Gyr's mind. Even though Kestrel was nearly a dot now, he could tell if her skimmer collided with that shield and exploded into little pieces. Kestrel couldn't age and most forms of damage she could recover from simply by sleeping or falling unconscious, even lethal wounds would he healed in a matter of minutes of hours, depending on the extent of the damage. But he wasn't at all sure she could survive an explosion.

Gyr braced himself for that final, split second when he knew Kestrel and the barrier would collide, but he didn't close his eyes. He gripped the throttles of his skimmer so tightly his hands shook. He clenched his teeth so tightly he could feel the intense pressure. In was in this instant moment, he felt that he could see the intermediary between life and death, only now it was directed at the one person he cared about most.

He couldn't help her this time…

Then the unexpected, happened, at least for Gyr. As he saw Kestrel's dot near the barrier, he didn't see an explosion as he had feared. Instead, the speck that was Kestrel has simply disappeared. He could make out her faraway appearance one second, then the next, she was gone without a trace or hint as to why. His first feeling was relief, but then he felt confused. He was sure that he had seen a shield around that area. Could it have just been a simple cloaking field after all?

Well the best thing to do of course was to find out.

Swallowing a huge lump in his throat, Gyr revved his skimmer and it sputtered to life once again. He then thrust on the accelerator and flew forward. It took him longer to cover the same speed as Kestrel's upgraded skimmer, but eventually he saw the large, egg-shaped shield towering over him. As Gyr flew close enough to the barrier that he could almost reach out and touch it, he held his breath and closed his eyes as he flew his skimmer into the dome-like field. His mind in darkness, he felt a wave of cold passing over him. It wasn't freezing; it was closer to the feel of a gentle breeze as it swept across one's face, despite the cold air whipping around him before. It felt more like a tingling sensation that flowed through his body. As the feeling passed over him, Gyr suddenly felt the compulsion to open his eyes.

What he saw, he nearly couldn't comprehend…

He saw, just as Kestrel had seen, a massive, forested terra. but thanks to his proximity, Gyr sow a great deal more detail than Kestrel initially had His first thought was how unbelievably huge the terra was. The second was the design of the terra itself. It was similar in shape to Terra Atmosia and Cyclonia, many parts of the terra were flat with thick forests, but there were levels above the initial base of the terra that had similarly forested areas. Even below there were subsections of the terra all with the same type of environment. And at the center of it all, a large, grey mountain stood mightily, as if watching over the dense forests. The crag was so huge that if the sun had been on the other side, it would have easily cast its shadow over most of the forested areas below, plunging the trees and whatever lived, or had lived there at one point, into a descending darkness. Gyr could also see somewhat smaller, but still quite large mountains flanking the large crags sides, they almost seemed to be erected in a circular pattern, but Gyr couldn't see enough of them to be sure

But this place was clearly far more than a mere jungle terra with mountains.

Gyr could see clearly man-made structures scattered all around the terra. They were very streamlined and shiny, and were also very smooth and curved structures, unlike the rectangular buildings one would usually find on Atmosia. These structures were scattered and varying in size, so Gyr couldn't tell if they were ruins, functioning buildings, or something else altogether.

The largest of these structures however, was in fact the closest to him. Before his eyes Gyr saw a large, metallic runway that stretched out well beyond the terra itself. The runway lead to a large, oval-shaped building, similar to the design of the Sky Council building, but more round where that building was sharp and rectangular. The building itself was built in a curved fashion so as to be parallel with the round edge of the terra. Gyr then noticed smaller, but taller structures spaced at least 50 meters away from the central building on each side. Gyr looked around the circular edges of the terra as it curved around and could faintly see similar structures at the terra's eastern and westernmost points, but for some reason, they appeared faded, as though they were farther away than they should be.

Then, as he looked down on the large runway again, Gyr could see the miniature image of Kestrel and her skimmer. Kestrel herself had already dismounted her vehicle and was walking slowly toward the large building t the runway's end. Gyr guided his worn-down skimmer down towards her, he didn't get very far as he heard a loud bang coming from the exhaust.

"Oh perfect…" he said with an exasperated sigh. "_Now_ it's finally starting to come apart…"

As if in response, the skimmer's controls suddenly stuck. Despite Gyr tugging hard, the control column seemed locked in place. He could hear his engine as the loud humming began to die down like a fading heartbeat. He knew the skimmer was now at its last seconds of life.

"Come on…come on!" Gyr exclaimed, struggling to keep the skimmer in the air, or at least keep it from completely crashing. The runway was getting closed, but the speed at which it did so was a little less than desirable. Desperately he pulled on the steadfast yokes, trying desperately to control with the dying machine as it plummeted to the runway.

"Come on…Work!" Gyr shouted, then, having very limited options, balled his hand into a fist and struck the dashboard with great force. Suddenly, Gyr could feel the control column moving again, but as Gyr looked beyond his broken down controls, he noticed the runway was now dangerously close, and he was nose-diving straight for it. Gyr didn't have time to think, he had to make a move quickly or he would crash hard on the metallic surface. Instinctively, he pulled up on the skimmer's right yoke, feeling the skimmer lift slightly so the nose was no longer pointed toward the runway. Gyr tried to shift the skimmer into land-mode, but once again, the controls refused to respond, and soon after, Gyr felt the violent shuddering and deafening screech of metal on metal as the skimmer met the ground. The damaged vehicle began to spin rather quickly as it screeched along the runway. Gyr, valuing his life more than Kestrel's broken down skimmer, took the first opportunity to leap off the defunct machine. As he flew off of the skimmer, he realized he had picked the wrong time to do so as he saw the edge of the runway as gravity had taken hold of him again.

And he was flying right past it…

Gyr twisted his body in a desperate bid to grab the ledge as he saw himself slowly descending past it. He stretched he arm outward so far he could feel the muscles being pulled to their limits. He saw the edge of the runway met his line of sight, still outstretched, and gripped only air. Then he watched in horror as he dropped past it, the metallic surface ascending as he fell. He felt all his hope and energy drain out of his body, replaced with despair of his inevitable demise. Then suddenly a pair of hands with familiar red gloves clamped onto his still outstretched hand.

Gyr looked up and saw Kestrel's face, a scowl of determination across it as she began to pull Gyr back up.

"And this is why I don't take you with me." She said with a smirk as she pulled him up. While Kestrel wasn't gifted with enhanced upper body strength, her natural strength was enough to pull Gyr, who while not exactly muscular, clearly had the body of a martial artist.

"Ha…ha," grunted Gyr, un-amused. As Kestrel pulled him back up to the top he got to his feet. "Maybe if you actually _fixed_ that crap-skimmer before we left it wouldn't have happened!"

"Whoa hey, what's with the snappishness?" asked Kestrel

"Oh well I don't know…" Gyr began, sarcasm seeping out of his clenched teeth. "Maybe I didn't get something to eat before we left. Oh wait I know! IT'S BECAUSE I ALMOST FELL INTO THE FREAKING WASTELANDS!!"

"Hey! I saved your sorry butt didn't I?" Kestrel shot back. Naturally she would respond to anger with more anger. "Sorry that I wasn't there to stand in front of your skimmer and break your fall as it crashed and burned then skidded off the runway!"

"You shouldn't have gone off alone like that in the first place!" Gyr said lividly. "I mean seriously, what were you thinking?! If that cloaking field had been a barrier you would have smashed right into it!"

Kestrel looked like she was going to chew Gyr out again, but her scowl suddenly melted into a grin. "This isn't about you falling off the terra is it?"

Gyr blinked at her sudden change of subject, obviously caught off guard by what she had been implying. "Of course it is! But I just…" his words trailed off. His cheeks began to turn beet-red and his brain seemed to stall as he was trying to find out what to say without implying anything. "It's just not something anyone should do if they don't know anything about this place!"

Kestrel shook her head, but maintained her grin. "Look Gyr, I'm sorry about the skimmer ok?" she said casually, then her tone became more firm. "But I don't need you to baby me."

Gyr sighed; the feeling of narrowly escaping death had drained him of any further energy to argue. "Fine… Whatever."

The bitterness in Gyr's words was something Kestrel wasn't accustomed too. Normally Gyr was the most reasonable of the pair, typically trying to act calmly and think about a situation when Kestrel would just rush in. But this time something was different; they had argued before of course, and sometimes Gyr could get as mad as she could. But she didn't feel the same anger behind his words as before, the same feeling of annoyance of frustration, even though those emotions were both present, she could feel something else within the words. It felt like general concern, which was common for Gyr, but behind even that there was something else. It was a difficult emotion to categorize for her; it was like a color she didn't have a name for.

"Uh…Gyr?" she asked, now generally concerned herself.

"Forget it. It's nothing." He replied. "Let's just get moving again, we're here after all."

Kestrel simply shrugged in response, suddenly wondering about Gyr for the first time in years. She thought she knew him so well, and then something about him had caught her off guard. But apparently, she wasn't the only one confused.

Together they walked along the runway towards the central structure. As they walked closer to it, they could see another outline of a barrier being projected from the top of the building. Eventually the large dome that made up the outline became clear. It was like a large, blue bubble of light encircling the entire terra past the runway. The smaller tower-like structures he had seen before also emitted this energy; Gyr could only assume that there were more of these towers around the terra's base.

"It's a shield…" Gyr said aloud, admiring the structure with awe.

"Of course it is," Kestrel replied. Her voice was now soft and low as if she were lost in thought. Gyr noticed the sudden change in her mood, which was surprising to say the least. Once again she wasn't acting like herself.

"Hey Kess…" Gyr began. "Er…why did you fly head-on towards this terra like that anyway?"

Kestrel stopped moving, stood still for about a second, and turned to face Gyr. He at first expected she was going to have an annoyed glare on her face, but instead he saw in her eyes the glint of thoughtfulness.

"I'm not really sure," she replied. "It seems really weird, but I…" she looked toward the building in front of them. She looked at it as if perplexed, like something was out of place. She then turned back to Gyr.

"…I feel like I've been here before."

Gyr wore a look of surprise and confusion, that response made no sense to him at all. He had known Kestrel since she was five. They had been in the same Spec Ops training program in Cyclonia together, albeit he wasn't involved for nearly as long as she had been. They had practically grown up together. But she had never mentioned anything like this before. Of course, Gyr couldn't recall Kestrel ever having mentioned where she had lived before she had met him.

"But… how is that possible?" Gyr asked.

"I don't know," Kestrel answered with a shrug, and then started walking again while still keeping eye contact with Gyr. "It seems so…familiar, this place. But it's all really fuzzy, like I've seen it in my dreams."

"You mean like you've had visions of it?" Gyr asked her.

"No, not exactly." She replied. "It just really…vague, but I really do feel like I know this place."

"Then, you wouldn't by any change know what this Terra's name is would you?" Gyr asked.

Kestrel thought for a moment. Did she know the terra's name? A thorough search of her memory yielded no matches. It was strange, she remembered this place, but apparently if she _had_ been here once already, she never learned the name of the terra.

"Nothing comes to mind…"

Once Kestrel and Gyr made it to the end of their walk, the found themselves looking up at the building directly in front of them. Down at their level there was a device embedded into the building that Kestrel also recognized. It reminded her of a TV monitor, only it faced upwards to the sky rather than forward so someone could watch it. The "screen" shone a bright blue hue, with several line patterns crisscrossing it, giving the image of a chess board without differentiating colors. Upon closer inspection however, Kestrel saw that this checkered pattern was actually floating _above_ the screen like a hologram.

"I guess this thing is supposed to get us inside" stated Gyr

"Yeah," said Kestrel, inspecting the device. "But how?"

"You don't know?" Asked Gyr, confused by the apparent holes in Kestrel's memory of this place.

"I don't remember ever using this thing…" Kestrel said with a sigh. She looked around the dais, trying to find out if there was something around or behind the device. The dais itself turned out to be part of the building; there were no external wires or anything else of the sort to prove otherwise. Whatever it was, it was connected to the building, and therefore to the shields, hopefully…

Of course, none of this mattered if she couldn't figure out how to make the thing work…

After several minutes of searching, only to find nothing else that seemed to open the door, the only thing left was the blue screen itself. Kestrel had a feeling that this was what opened the barriers from the start, if the glowing screen was any indication. But like everything else, there was nothing to indicate how to even begin to use it.

"Well this just sucks…" Kestrel said flatly. "You'd think Glittersilk would have told us how to open this stupid thing!"

Frustrated, she slammed her hand down, open palmed, onto the blue screen and let out an irritated growl. What she failed to notice however was the beam of light that had suddenly appeared across the screen. The white beam made a swift sweep, bending and twisting so as to match the shape of her hand as it passed over her before reverting to its previous shape as the sweep ended.

"_Scan complete," _ a tinny, monotonic voice said from seemingly nowhere. The sudden voice caused Kestrel to remove her hand from the scanner instinctively. _"Primary match…found."_

"What the...?" exclaimed Kestrel. She hadn't realized she had done anything, then suddenly the screen seemed to have spoken to her.

"_Identity verified," _the machine stated. _"Lowering outer barrier"_

Suddenly there was a low, rumbling sound, like thunder in the distance. They then heard a distinct crackling noise. Finally, Gyr and Kestrel looked up to see a section of the barrier was being whittled away, as if it were deteriorating from the top, downward. Eventually the shield completely disappeared from the frontal section and what Kestrel and Gyr thought had been a wall, suddenly split in two and began to open. As the doors opened, they could feel fresh, clear air brushing against them. A bright blue light washed over their eyes for a moment until they adjusted to it. Inside they saw the forests that had seen before from the air, but now the intricate details of the terra's flora was now in perfect view. The terra's forests were a lot like Terra Amazonia and Terra Tropica, and there were also a lot of rivers and canyons. But what those terras didn't have was the several scattered buildings of similar design to the outer building and several dome structures scattered around the surface. They all had blue shields similar to the large shield around the whole terra, but they couldn't see what was behind them. And of course, Kestrel and Gyr could now clearly see the range of mountains in the distance.

"Well…" Gyr began, still taking in what had just happened, "I guess you were right Scout."

"What do you mean?" she asked, not taking her eyes off of the scene in front of her.

"You _have_ been here before."

Kestrel looked at him perplexed. "What?"

"How else do you explain the door opening for you like that?"

"Maybe I hit something sensitive or something." Kestrel reasoned. "But, maybe you're right…"

"Well either way, we should probably go inside don't you think?"

"Oh…right" Kestrel said, embarrassed, and the two walked through the open doors together.

"_Welcome to Carona." _The device chimed. _"Please visit any available information kiosk for further assistance."_

After Kestrel and Gyr had walked a fair distance away from the entrance, they heard the doors close behind them and the telltale crackling sound return. When they looked up, they saw the giant shield restructuring itself, eventually returning to its original state.

"No turning back now." said Kestrel as she watched the fields regenerate. "Not that I know where to begin though…"

"Arygyn said that there was something here that was supposed to make you stronger." Gyr stated. "Do you have any idea what he might have been referring to?"

"Tch! I doubt _anyone _who talks to that freak knows what he's talking about." replied Kestrel, her memories of Arygyn not exactly pleasant ones. She imagined he made other lives similarly miserable. "But, he was right about this terra being here. So I'm more inclined to believe that he was telling the truth about that too."

"Well, he said he knew Kai right?" said Gyr "What if he's working with him?"

"He doesn't seem like the type to do that." Kestrel answered. "I don't know if he's helping Kai or not, but he seems to be interested in more than just Kai's goals, or mine at that. At least, that's what I gathered from him anyway."

"Wait…"Gyr said, confused. "You figured all that out about him?"

Kestrel turned to him and grinned. "He's not the only one who's good at reading people. Though admittedly there's a lot of guesswork involved when it comes to someone like him."

"Heh, yeah I'm sure."

After a few seconds of silence, Gyr began the conversation again. "So, any idea where we should start?"

"It's a pretty big terra," Kestrel replied. "We could try those buildings scattered around here, but I'm more interested to see what's behind those shields."

"Old-fashioned split up?" Gyr suggested.

"Fine, just don't go too far ok?"

"Oh come on," exclaimed Gyr. "What are the chances we'll run into-"

"Shh! Don't jinx us, idiot!!" Kestrel whispered. "I'll check…erm…that dome over there" she pointed to a shield station further ahead. "You check the building next to it."

"Why that one?" asked Gyr "There's a bunch of them around here that are a lot closer."

Kestrel rolled her eyes. "Think about it Gyr, who leaves the important stuff in places where people can get to more easily?"

Gyr sighed, not even bothering to argue. "Ok, let's just go."

And so, Kestrel and Gyr took the extra hike up to the shield structure that Kestrel had just happened to pick randomly. Gyr had thought it was strange that they hadn't seen any other forms of life so far. He had heard various birds and other animals, but only in the distance, or so it seemed. Yet they hadn't come across anything yet. True, they hadn't been on the terra very long, but Gyr had expected to see some animals or something. Somehow, the animals were around, but something kept them away. The question is what was doing it?

"Ok let's go," said Kestrel heading towards the shielded dome. "If you find anything, let me know. I'll leave the door open for you."

Gyr nodded in acknowledgement and headed for the nearby building while Kestrel made her way to the dome. This dome shield, while smaller than the one at the entrance, was still big enough to cover a city block. She even found a podium similar to the one at the entrance, complete with the blue scanner. Knowing what do to this time, she placed her hand on the scanner. She watched in fascination as the mean of light scanned her open palm, taking the shape of her hand as it moved under it. She had never seen anything like this before.

When the device finished scanning, the small dome opened up a small portion of itself, reminiscent of a tunnel, and Kestrel proceeded to walk through it, not entirely sure what to expect to see on the other side. She made sure to stand as close to the opening as she could when she walked through, hoping that would keep the barrier from closing on her. After she was sure the barrier wasn't going to close, she looked at the scene before her.

It was something she wasn't prepared for…

Kestrel saw a simple field of grass. There were hills and a few trees, but otherwise it was essentially a plain. For most people such a place wouldn't seem all that interesting. For Kestrel however, it was something very different.

Memories rushed back into her head like a thousand photographs thrown in front of her face at once. She saw her five year-old self again. She saw her playing on the grassy hills, running around and laughing. She saw the silhouette of a woman behind her as she embraced her child self.

Kestrel was brought to her knees. This place, it was the same. The same as the place she had been when she was younger, before she had been taken to Cyclonia. This place was almost an exact copy. She couldn't help but stare in shock at this place. So many thoughts came into her mind at once. So many questions she had for herself. She was frozen stiff by her sudden realization. Sounds were muffled; her sense of the world around her began to disappear. She could feel something grabbing her shoulder, but she did nothing in response. She saw the shadow of a figure in front of her, but her gaze was transfixed on the grassy plains before her. She could here the figure's shouts of concern, but she could barely hear them, her mind was in disarray. She didn't know what to make of this at first. It was all so overwhelming. Then suddenly a single realization came to mind. She found herself being dragged back into reality, her senses returning to normal, she was met with a familiar face.

"Kess! Kestrel!! Come on snap out of it!"

Kestrel blinked and shook her head, trying to pull herself together. "Gyr?" she asked.

"Oh by the Aurora Stone, don't scare me like that!" exclaimed Gyr. "I thought you had been attacked or something! What happened?"

"I..." Kestrel began, trying to pull all of her thoughts together. Then that single thought came back to mind. "Gyr! I found it!" she shouted with excitement. "I found it! She's here!"

"Kestrel…Who's here?"

"My mom!" she shouted ecstatically. "This is where we used to be! Me and her! She's here!"

"Kess you need to calm down!" Gyr urged. "You mother's not here."

"But she _was_ here Gyr!" she shouted. "You were right, _I_ was right, I _have_ been here before! I lived here before!"

"Kestrel! You need to snap out of it and calm down!" Gyr shouted back. "Just take a deep breath for a second."

Kestrel breathed in heavily, when breathed out. The anxiousness passed over her. She could feel her heart continue to race, but for the most part she was beginning to come to her senses.

"Ok," said Gyr. "Now tell me again."

After taking another deep breath, Kestrel tried to explain to Gyr about her memories of her mother. How she had seen herself and her mother in a field just like the one they were now standing in.

"Seriously?" asked Gyr. "But how is that possible?"

"I don't know Gyr!" she exclaimed. "But it is! That memory is the clearest in my mind. I don't know what this place is, or why my mother and I were in it, but this proves I was here, which means she was here too!"

"Maybe," added Gyr. "But that doesn't mean she's still here."

"I know that!" Kestrel snapped. "But there's got to be clues or something right? If she was here then maybe she lived here. Maybe other people live here too!"

"That might be possible but…" Gyr trailed off as he saw something moving in the forests behind them. He thought it might have been an animal or the wind however and dismissed it, more concerned with his friend at the moment.

"So…did you find anything in that building?" Kestrel asked him, apparently fishing for more information.

"I couldn't get inside," Gyr replied. "I didn't even see a door, or anything that looked like it would be a door. I'm not sure how anyone would-"

"LOOK OUT!" Kestrel shouted as she tackled Gyr to the ground.

"Kestrel! What are you-"Gyr didn't finish his sentence when he saw a bladed weapon land right where they had once been. The wielder of the weapon stood not far from the impact. Though Gyr couldn't get a very good look as he was tackled to the ground, it was obvious the figure was wearing some kind of armor.

Kestrel immediately got up and readied her weapons. Gyr followed, removing his Spade staff from his back.

"Heed this one's warning intruders," The attacker said, not moving from his landing position, "You are not permitted to be here. Leave now!"

"Warning? You call trying to cut us in half a 'warning?!" Kestrel barked while revving her tonfas up. "I don't know how you do things here but in the civilized world you warn someone _before _you try to kill them."

"This one has no reason to answer to you." The man replied. Then stood up to face them. "You are intruding on the land of its masters.' This one cannot permit you to live if you do not leave now."

Kestrel and Gyr were shocked at what they saw; they had been attacked by what looked like a young boy, probably 14 or 15 at the latest. He wore silver plate armor with golden embroideries embedded into the base of the armor itself. The boy's hair was completely white and was tied behind his head in a queue-like ponytail. The boy's eye color was pitch-black, making his irises look like voids in the middle of his eyes. Even more strange was that the boy's voice was distinctly like one a young man would have, probably at 18 to 20 years old at least.

His weapon was even more strange most of it looked like it could be a gnarled staff like one stereotypical wizards used on some of those cartoons Kestrel loved to watch, but at the end where the knot would have been, Kestrel could only describe as some kind of glaive-like device. The glaive blade was inserted into the weapon like a buzz saw, with only half of the weapon exposed while the rest was most likely within the staff. The weapon was almost reminiscent of a scythe or an axe, but with some properties of both.

Suddenly he attacked again, the blades started to spin with incredible speed and crimson red energy began to radiate from it. The boy swung Kestrel instinctively blocked the attack, but the attack broke her defense. Thinking quickly, she rolled to the side and returned to an attack position. But at the same time she was stunned. This boy's attack had enough strength to break through her tonfa. No small task since the impact crystals were designed to provide a powerful defense against strong attacks because of their repelling properties. The assailant charged again, swinging his weapon over his head in order to execute a cleaving blow. Kestrel revved her tonfas once more, setting them to 4x momentum. While this level limited her speed somewhat, it would be adequate to block the boy's attack, or so she hoped.

As the attack was about to meet her, a familiar crescent-shaped blade stopped the weapon. She could hear the screeching sound of the weapon's spinning blades on the crescent blade as they met.

"Hey don't forget about me!" Gyr said mockingly, then parried the boy's weapon. The boy responded with a swinging attack, which Gyr parried with the other blade on his staff, sending the boy's weapon upward but not out of his hand. Gyr took advantage of this opening and struck the ground with his staff's crescent blade, then swung it up in an arching motion toward his opponent. As he did, large spikes of ice suddenly erupted from the ground. The line of stalagmite icicles charged toward the boy, who proceeded to dodge nimbly out of the way and cut the oncoming ice down with his burning blade. He proceeded to attack Gyr again, but then Kestrel jumped in between them and aimed a punch at the boy's face, her tonfa in hand. The blunt tail-end of her weapon collided with the attacker's face, sending him flying back, but also sending a surge of pain through Kestrel's arm.

"Agh! That felt like I was hitting a Cyclonian carrier's hull!" Kestrel shouted, feeling her arm throbbing. "What's his head made out of? Rocks?"

The boy suddenly shot up and charged again, his weapon colliding with Kestrel's. She managed to hold her defense this time, and pushed on the boy's weapon, forcing their faces to close in on one another. The by wore a focused expression of his face, but after a second or two, it changed to utter surprise, as if he had just realized something. He then broke off his attack and put his weapon on his back, then got on one knee in a bowing gesture.

"By the Makers! This one didn't realize it was you! Please forgive it!" he pleaded in his unusually adult-sounding voice.

Kestrel stood there perplexed. "Uh…you mind telling me what's going on?"

The boy looked up. "Of course," he replied. "This one's designation is C.O.D. numerical input 5344628."

"Uh…ooookay…" Kestrel said scratching her head. "Got anything shorter?"

"This one is also called 'Code.'" He stated. "This one's function is to oversee and secure the exterior and interior rings of Terra Carona, as you call this place."

"Wait wait…" Kestrel held up her hand to silence him. "So what are you exactly? You aren't human are you?"

"This one is not human, not in the way you perceive it at least," Code answered. "This one is known as a Compartmentalized Organic Doll or C.O.D. It was designed by the Makers to protect this place."

Kestrel was still confused, especially by this boy's unusual speech pattern, not to mention he referred to himself as some kind of "doll". "Ok then, so why did you stop attacking me?"

"Please forgive this one," Code replied. "It did not recognize you at first, but it should have known that you must have returned if the exterior defenses were deactivated without incident."

"But _how_ do you know me?" Kestrel asked, getting a little irritated with the boy's answers.

"This one knew you from many years prior, you and your mother," Code answered. "Both of you had extended residence here."

"So mom _was _here!" Exclaimed Kestrel, a wave of energy surged through her upon having her suspicions confirmed.

"Yes, are you looking for her?" the boy asked. "This one is sorry to tell you that she had departed from this place some time ago."

"What?" Kestrel's spirits sank again. "But then… where did she go? How long has she been gone?"

"This one is afraid that she did not make information about the destination privy to it," Code replied. "However, she left this terra approximately one of your years ago."

Kestrel sighed with frustration. "Look, I have no idea what you are, or what this place is or what _any _of this is about, but is there any way I could figure out more of this? Do you guys have keep any records or something?"

"If you wish, this one can take you to the inner ring of Terra Carona," Code replied. "There is a central database there that may have-"

"Good, take us there!" demanded Kestrel immediately, though she wasn't sure what a "central database" was, anything that sounded like it had information was good at this point.

"Ok, let's get going then." Code said. "The entrance to the inner ring is in that mountain range, this one can take you to it."

"Sounds good to me!" Kestrel replied with enthusiasm. She then looked behind her

"You comin' Gyr?"

"Yeah, hang on," he answered as he ran after them.

"_Wow," _he thought, _"All this stuff keeps getting weirder and weirder…"_

Kestrel and Gyr, lead by the enigmatic Code, forged a path through the dense forests of Carona. It wasn't something Kestrel was a stranger to; living on Terra Amazonia for so long gave her the experience to navigate through jungles without too much effort. What was really irritating Kestrel now was that this "Code" character was guiding them without even so much as mentioning _where_ exactly they were going. She had begun to regret putting her trust in this guy; she wasn't even sure where he was leading them. Just moments ago he hadn't hesitated to attack them. It could be some kind of trap for all she knew. Nevertheless, it was either follow him, or spend days at a time searching this colossal terra.

"It shouldn't be much further," said Code. "We are very close to the mountains now, our destination lies beyond them."

"Wait a minute!" Kestrel exclaimed. "You mean to tell me we had to trudge through this jungle, and now we have to climb a mountain too?!"

"Of course not, that would take too much time" Code replied simply. "This one knows the location of the main passageway created by the Makers. It will take us _through_ the mountains rather than over them."

"Ok seriously, will you stop doing that?" asked Kestrel in an annoyed tone.

"Doing what?" asked Code, looking confused.

"Talking like that!" Kestrel snapped. "Why do you keep referring to yourself as 'This one' and 'it'? It's really starting to get on my nerves! And by 'it' I don't mean 'me!'"

"Sorry, but it has to refer to itself in this manner," Code replied, a hint of annoyance in his own voice, as if he'd heard the question a few times before. "It is part of my programming."

"Programming?" Kestrel asked with curiosity. "What, are you some kind of machine?"

"Not exactly," answered Code. "This one is an organic life form created synthetically through means that are similar to…"

"Ok, can we skip the science lesson and just get to the point?" Interrupted Kestrel, clearly irritated at the rather dragged out dialogue Code seemed to favor.

"If you wish," Code replied simply, "In laymen's terms, this one is similar to what you might call a 'homunculus', though in truth this categorization is not entirely accurate either."

"So… you don't know what you are then?" Kestrel cocked her eyebrow in skepticism.

"This one is just Code," he replied. "The others are themselves as well, that's just how it is?"

"Others?!" exclaimed Kestrel. "You mean there's more than one of you?"

"Of course," Code replied, "This one has a designation, as do all the others. We are not identical if that's what you mean, but we are of the same design."

"I wonder if they get just as irritated when you keep saying 'this one' and crap…" Kestrel said gruffly. "Or is it just something you all do?"

"This one understands why you find its speech pattern…unusual, to say the least," answered Code. "But to answer your question, yes, we all speak in the same manner, just not with each other." Before Kestrel could ask about it further, Code continued.

"Specifically, the Makers programmed this diction into our systems so that when we spoke to other non-C.O.D. organic life-forms, we would be forced to refer to ourselves in the third-person. When we are in the company of other C.O.D.s however, we are free to speak in much the same format as you do."

"The…the Ancients did this to you?" Kestrel asked, her tone now sounding both curious and somewhat concerned, she had read a lot about the ancients, mainly what Cyclonia's secret libraries had on the subject, which was sketchy at best. Much of the information was based on guesswork based on found scraps of supposed "ancient tech" that was too small for anyone to even determine what it was for. The more restricted sections detailed much more about the Ancients and much of their technology as it had been based off of more valid findings and more well-preserved samples. Still, even Cyclonia's vast mountains of books on the Ancients didn't compare to what Kestrel had seen in the span of just a few hours.

"How many of you…erm…'guys' are there exactly?" asked Gyr.

"Including this one," Code began, "There are ninety-seven C.O.D.s currently active at this time."

"Ninety-seven?" asked Kestrel in a skeptical tone. "Why create only that many? Couldn't they have just made thousands or more if they could?"

"There were more of us at one time," Code answered. "But certain complications arose that ended most other C.O.D.s and ensured no more would be built."

"So essentially they decided to cut off production," Stated Gyr.

"The situation was somewhat more complicated than that." Code replied. "More specifically, the Makers seemed to classify us as a potential threat should we get out of control. The halting of production, which took years to create one C.O.D., as well as the Temperance Protocol…err…the system which restricts our language capacity among other things…were designed to separate us from them, Effectively allowing them to tell us apart when necessary to identify any possible threat we may have posed."

"But the Ancients created you didn't they?" Kestrel asked confused. "Why would they think you would turn on them if they built you?" Kestrel was more concerned with the Ancient's willing discrimination of these beings just because they were afraid of them. It was strange for her because it struck something familiar in her mind, something personal.

"We aren't simple tools that existed solely for their purposes." Code answered coolly, Kestrel had worried that he had taken offense to the question, but the, as if he had pulled himself together, he continued in his former tone. "Artificial or not, they gave us souls. We are essentially organic life forms just as they were…just as you are."

"Look, I…I wasn't trying to insult you or anything," Kestrel said awkwardly. "I was just curious that's all."

"This one isn't offended by you," Code replied, still with a slight tinge of annoyance in his words. "But we should continue this discussion later; it seems we have arrived at our destination."

Kestrel and Gyr's attention once again returned to the outside world. They now stood before one of the large mountains they had seen in the distance before. A colossal waterfall cascaded thunderously down the crag's face and fell into the river below. There were other mountains to the sides of the one they were facing, seeming like they could stretch out forever in either direction. It looked like a great impenetrable wall of rock was before them.

"Uh…_this_ is where we were going? A waterfall?" Kestrel asked. "I mean it's nice and all, but we can't exactly find mush here other than rocks and water."

"This one did mention that our destination lies beyond the mountains if you'll recall." Replied Code, with a slight hint of condescension as though he were talking to a child, which of course Kestrel did not fail to pick up on.

"Hey, no need to get all smart with me!" Kestrel snapped. "I wasn't really paying attention to that; I was too distracted by your grammatically incorrect speech pattern!"

Kestrel felt a hand clasp gently on her shoulder. "Come on Kess," said Gyr. "He's willing to help you find information about your mom, the least you could do is _not_ pick a fight with him."

As much as she hated to admit it, Gyr was right. This may be the best chance she had to find out where her mother was. Maybe even without having to hunt Kai. It was too important to pass up, but having to put up with this bioengineered child-looking construct and its temperament still stung her pride.

"Tch! Whatever…" Kestrel scoffed, curtly jerking her shoulder out of Gyr's grip.

"This one is not aiding you solely for your personal matters," Code broke in. "There is a far more dire situation that we will all need you aid to resolve, otherwise you would never see what it is about to show you."

Despite being talked down to again, Code's words piqued her interest. "What do you mean by 'dire situation'? You seem pretty strong yourself and I can assume the other…guys like you are strong too. So what do you need _me_ for?"

"Sorry, but this one has already revealed a great deal of information about that, it is not permitted to say more," Code replied flatly, "Suffice it to say, that there is no cause for concern as of yet, but when there it, it will be fairly obvious."

"_Just keep it up you little brat…" _thought Kestrel as she clenched her teeth furiously behind her closed mouth.

"Either way," Code continued. "Perhaps it's time to enter now,"

Code walked closer to the riverbank facing the waterfall before stopping at the edge of the water. He then lifted up his hand and held his open palm to the top of the falls. He began to speak, but it wasn't the language Kestrel knew. It was alien and different to her ears. However, the pronunciation and sounds of the words sounded vaguely familiar, and she could have sworn she had caught one or two words she had read somewhere before, but never heard spoken.

"_He must be speaking some variant of the Ancient tongue…" _Kestrel thought, astonished. _"I never thought I'd hear it actually being spoken by someone though."_

Once the doll had stopped speaking, a loud mechanized sound bellowed out from the top of the waterfall. A large slab of metal suddenly emerged from the rushing waters near the top and slowly slid out further, blocking the normal flow of the falls. The metal slab looked like a thick piece of steel that had been curved downward on both sides. The flowing water from the falls then began to slide down these curvatures and fall into the river on the opposite sides of one another. As the water parted, the party could see a hole in the face of the mountain with a smaller, less thunderous waterfall emanating from its mouth, along with a white, metallic slab extending a few feet away from it like a platform. Said platform had golden railings on the left and right sides, making it resemble a lookout point or maybe a sightseeing deck.

Suddenly, the bottom of the platform glowed with an electric blue light, then began to move moved; it started to vibrate a little at first, then as if attached to a zip line, it began to descend in a diagonal fashion towards the group. The lights under it pulsed with energy as it moved, reverberating in a harmonious manner with slow, rippling pulses of blue light. As the platform neared its destination, it stopped short of coming into contact with the water and earth and stood floating inches from the ground.

"This, friends," began Code, gesturing toward the floating dais, "will be our mode of transportation towards Inner Carona."

Gyr and Kestrel stood there, their mouths agape with the awe of seeing the level of technology before them. This slab of ornately decorated metal was floating on its own, seemingly with no power source, other than perhaps the lights coming from underneath it, but even then they didn't see any device that could be attached to the device to power it.

"So, as they say, all aboard!" The C.O.D. continued, but after a few seconds of immobility from the two, he spoke again.

"Come now, if you are amazed at this simple thing, you probably won't be able to handle the actual city," he said humorously. "Now let us hurry, we don't want to waste time."

Kestrel and Gyr snapped out of their trances and began to board the floating platform. They were careful, just in case it would lose its balance if weight was shifted the wrong way, but as they got on it, the platform didn't budge at all aside from the barely noticeable bobbing up and down it did while floating. Code was the last to get on, jumping in go quickly that Gyr and Kestrel instinctively grabbed hold of the railings, but once again, the platform remained steadfast.

Once they were all aboard, the platform began to ascend, following a diagonal movement up to the tunnel at the top of the falls. It went up a few feet further from its previous position so it could fit inside the tunnel itself and then began to move forward. Kestrel and Gyr both grabbed the railings again as it did so, but began to relax somewhat when they didn't fly off.

"Honestly, you two are jumpy," said Code shaking his head. "This one supposes they don't really have technology like this where you're from?"

"Well, only if it's attached to a cable or something, maybe a lift," Kestrel replied. "But I've never seen one like this."

"I agree, this is amazing," added Gyr. "How is this even possible?"

"Now's no the time for these questions," answered Code. "Trust this one; you'll have many more by the time we arrive. You might as well save them for later."

Kestrel and Gyr looked around the tunnel; they saw blue lights similar to the ones at the bottom of the platform coming to life as they approached. They could hear the water rushing below them, but the light at the end of the tunnel indicated it couldn't have come from there, for they saw no source of water coming from that side. As they went further, they spotted the water gushing out from holes in the sides of the tunnel. Two large pipes on both sides of the tunnel were sending water to both ends of the tunnel, apparently causing it to fall out on both sides.

"Wow, the Ancients must really like waterworks huh?" Kestrel said sarcastically.

"There are pipelines like these all over the mountain ranges," Code replied. "They are meant to keep water in Outer Carona so the exterior environment doesn't suffer. Of course, this set up is mostly for show, it makes the trip more pleasant."

The party suddenly heard metal grinding against stone again. The door was closing on them from behind. Since it didn't spark a reaction from Code, Kestrel and Gyr assumed this was supposed to happen. Then they heard a small, clanking sound and the slabs came to an abrupt stop. This _did_ spark a reaction from Code, who turned his head towards the entrance, perplexed.

"Um…what was _that_?" Kestrel asked nervously.

"Hmm…this one isn't sure," Code answered. "Something seems to have jammed the dam system."

"Is that a bad thing?" asked Kestrel, hoping it wouldn't cause the tunnel to cave in or something.

"Not likely," Code answered simply. "A pebble might have shifted and gotten stuck in the machine. I'll send someone to check on it when we reach the city."

Despite Code's assurances, Kestrel couldn't shake this sudden feeling that something wasn't right. But they weren't dead so she hoped it she was just feeling agitated. She looked back at the rushing water below her like a little girl at Terra Neon on a flume ride. She almost reached her hand out to touch it, but decided against looking more foolish. She then focused to the exit, which was difficult to see beyond given the bright light emanating from it. Kestrel guessed it was still early afternoon by now given the amount of light, unless it was an interior area or something. But what kind of city would be held inside a giant dome?

Eventually the platform found its way to the end and Kestrel found herself nearly blinded by the bright yellow light. She shielded her eyes with her arm as she waited for her eyes to adjust. Once she could see clearly again she lowered her arm and, as if anticipating it, looked ahead.

What she was clearly caused her to fall off of the platform…

Before her very eyes was a colossal valley, surrounded by towering mountains on every side, forming a grand circle of mountains as though they were gathered together to watch over the valley within. The interior itself was comprised of two rings and one circle: the outer ring was completely water, crystal blue and shimmering brilliantly from the sunlight above. The interior circle was mostly grassy plains encircled by a white barrier which Kestrel guessed was used to keep it separated from the watery section. Small settlements dotted the green ring and she could see fields of crops arranged in square sections around some of the small buildings. It was amazing to behold

But even these wondrous things were made insignificant to the middlemost circle of the valley…

In the dead center of the great gorge was a massive plateau with an equally massive city adorning the top. The plateau towered above the two rings, having its own ring of water encircling it. And the city above was unbelievably beautiful; it seemed to be made of ivory and gold, and shined brightly in the sun's light. It was comprised of many white towers with small hints of gold at the top. There were smaller building that were just as beautiful as the towers that hung over them, and these buildings seemed to form the main design of the city, as these smaller buildings made up most of the districts the city was separated into. But there was one huge building in the middle of the great city that stood taller than the others. Though Kestrel could not make out exactly what it was, it looked too large to be a tower.

Gyr was just as stunned as Kestrel was. The two of them seemed like two symmetrically designed statues with a shocked expression frozen on their faces.

"So," Kestrel heard Code say. "What do you two think of it?"

"No…" began Kestrel.

"Way…" finished Gyr."

Code grinned for the first time since they had met him, but the two would never see it.

Kestrel and Gyr marveled at the scenery for a long time as the platform traveled to the city. They watched as the rings became more defined and the structures became more complex as they got closer and ultimately flew past them, until they finally landed at the edge of the city.

The city itself was far more beautiful up close; Kestrel could see the detail put into the buildings more clearly and noticed the unique design of the buildings and the city itself. It was unlike anything she had seen before on any other terra.

"This…" began Kestrel, having trouble finding the words. "This place is like a paradise."

"Well that was the original plan," explained Code. "This particular city was meant to be a safe heaven, almost like a resort. It gained newfound importance during the war however and became a fortress of sorts, and now we watch over it in case it is needed again."

"But this place is huge!" exclaimed Kestrel. "I mean, the city alone is about the size of Terra Atmosia. This terra is probably even bigger than Cyclonia!

"To be honest, I'm not even sure this is a terra," remarked Gyr. "It looks more like a part of Sky's End, maybe left over after whatever happened to the Ancients. It may even connect to the entire western border of the known Atmos."

"This one isn't entirely sure; it only has knowledge of this place." Said Code. "Compartmentalization protocol in case this one were to be captured. Still, such a theory is possible."

"Look, as unbelievable as this place is, you said you could help me find information about my mother," said Kestrel. "I'm guessing it's somewhere in this city right? We can do sightseeing later."

"Yes you may be correct," replied the C.O.D. "It is important you find what you are looking for…for all of us. Follow me."

Despite being in a hurry to find out about her mother, Kestrel couldn't help but look at the city as they went through its streets. It was unlike anything any other terra had to offer. Though the technology wasn't exactly out on display she knew it had to be teeming with all sorts of advanced equipment. It was just something a techno-nerd like herself couldn't help but think about.

As they walked further toward the city's interior Kestrel noticed the inhabitants beginning to emerge. They all looked like children, but Kestrel now knew better. Clearly they were all C.O.D.s like Code. She didn't see many and those she saw didn't seem too interested in her.

"Don't worry about them," said Code. "They are engaged in their tasks at the moment. This one will be glad to inform them about the situation later. As for now, we have a little ways to go."

They walked for about ten minutes until they stopped in front of a colossal castle before them. It was of the same design and colors as the other buildings, but it stood out as being both tall _and_ wide, as well has having many of its own smaller towers reaching up towards the sky. The castle itself was elevated from the rest of the city by a large staircase that completely encompassed the front of the building

Gyr let out an impressed whistle. "Wow, now _that's_ big."

"Ok it's official, I'm _so_ moving here."

"This is Castle Carona," stated Code. "It houses most of the power systems including the two main exterior shields as well as those surrounding the controlled environment zones around the land's exterior."

"Wait…you have _two_ exterior shields, that big one _and _one around the valley?" Kestrel asked. "Geez you guys like shields don't you? Seems like overkill to me."

"If you knew what we were fighting at the time, you would say that, this one assures you." Code replied. "Now let's continue, your answers lie inside the castle itself."

With that the trio began to climb the stairs that led to the main castle doors.

And climb…And climb…And…

"Ok seriously! Do we really need all these stairs?!" shouted Kestrel shouted exasperatedly. "I mean we got here on a floating floor tile, and now we gotta climb a million stairs?!"

"Kess has a point," added Gyr. "Especially for a group of people who were supposedly advanced…"

"We're almost at the top," replied Code. "Just be patient, these stairs are just for aesthetic purposes anyway."

"Yeah great," Kestrel remarked under her breath. "Were, gonna pass out from fatigue and heat exhaustion by climbing on Ancient art…"

Of course, Kestrel's whining was for naught, as they reached the top, only a little tired and not even overheated.

"There," said Code. "Now that wasn't so bad was it?"

Kestrel could only glare at the organic doll while Gyr rubbed the back of his head nervously.

The doors of the castle suddenly opened; two massive white doors swung out slowly and didn't even creak as they moved, revealing the interior of the castle.

"Ok, we're almost there," Code said.

"Quit saying 'we're almost there' and just take us already!" snapped Kestrel, getting really tired of being dragged around like this, especially when their "guide" for lack of a better term, kept saying "almost" every five seconds.

"Very well," replied Code simply, "This way,"

The interior of the castle was just as incredible as the outside, like the exterior, it was made of some kind of white metal that shined like porcelain. There were grand halls and rooms all around them and stair cases that spiraled up to the higher floors of the castle, adorned with the same golden railings as the platform. She also saw elevators next to them, as though to make the user decide on which to use. The room they were in now was a huge hall that elevated slightly by a raised floor with stairs in the middle that lead to an open doorway on the other side of the Great Hall. Code led them in that direction.

"What you seek is right in that room," he said. Then turned to Kestrel "And something special for you as well."

"Me?" Kestrel asked, but the doll, for once, refused to answer and continued to lead them up to the second room.

The room itself looked a lot like the rest of the castle, but the main difference was the large podium at the end of the room. It resembled the one Kestrel and Gyr had found at the entrance, but it was much more regal looking than that one. As expected Code led them to the end of the room and stopped just short of the podium.

"This," he began. "Is the central computer for Carona. Within it contains all the information about the city as well as the planet itself. At least, the information that existed since the time of the Makers…"

"And…" started Kestrel. "This is supposed to help me find mom?"

"Possibly," answered Code, "She used this computer frequently. It is possible she stored information in it for you."

"Really?" Kestrel began to tremble with excitement, but then realized something. "So…how do I turn it on?"

"How did you get into Carona in the first place?" replied Code. "Do what you did there."

Kestrel walked over and placed her hand on the podium just like before. But this time, lights shot forth from the machine and expanded into boxes in front of them like a projection screen. In the boxes were pictures Kestrel hadn't seen before and words she didn't recognize, well not most of them anyway. But it became clear that it was the written language of the Ancients.

"Well, that's impressive and all…" remarked Kestrel. "But how exactly do I use it?"

"The holographic screen is touch-sensitive," Code answered. "Just touch something on the screen."

Kestrel extended her arm and tried to press the symbol of the planet with her finger, as she "touched" it, the globe flashed and suddenly unraveled itself like a map before expanding and taking over the entire screen. Upon the new map were landmasses that Kestrel had never seen before, and huge bodies of water, more than she had ever seen in her entire life.

"What…What _is_ that?" asked a stunned Kestrel.

"That," Code began. "Is the original map of what our planet used to look like, before the events of the war which tore it apart."

"The Atmos used to look like _this_?" Gyr gawked at the map before him. "The landmasses are huge, and surrounded by all that water!"

"Yes, but as this one said, there are important matters to discuss," Code said, and then turned to Kestrel. "Your mother left something special for you, something that cannot be found in the central computer."

"Oh right!" exclaimed Kestrel as she remembered what the doll had said earlier. "What is it?"

"It's just in this room," Code gestured to an adjacent, smaller room to the right of the computer. "As it said, this is for you and you alone. This one is afraid your friend can't follow you."

Kestrel looked back at Gyr, who was standing at the computer, but he had a warm grin on his face.

"It's ok Scout," he said. "You go find it, whatever it is. I'll stay here and try to get this machine to work while you're gone. I'm better at translating the Ancient language anyway."

"If you insist," said Code, in a droning tone that implied he hated the idea. "Just please be careful. We'd hate for you to accidentally erase thousands of years of data."

"Okaaayy, no pressure here…" Gyr muttered nervously as Code and Kestrel left for the other room, then suddenly Code stopped and held his hand to his head as though he were wearing a headset, but his head was devoid of any technology of that sort, leaving Kestrel puzzled.

"Erm…what's wrong?" she asked.

"Something's going on outside," he replied grimly. "This one will go check it out. You should continue without me, just touch the scanner in the room and you'll find what you are looking for." With that, Code ran off moving with almost unnatural speed out the room, past Gyr in the computer room and out the Great Hall to the outside.

"Erm…ok…bye," Kestrel said, even though the doll was long gone. She then ventured to the other end of the room and as she had been instructed, placed her hand on the scanner. Just like the one at the entrance, the line of light passed down her hand once, then back up before disappearing. Just is it vanished, the wall suddenly opened up and caused Kestrel to jump a little, not expecting the entire wall to become a door. As it opened a faint, yet very familiar bluish-white light peered out until he slowly began to light up the entire room in a divine glow. Once the doors finally stopped, Kestrel could see the source of the light. A large cylindrical tank stood before her in the center of the room and within it was a brilliantly glowing sword. It was unlike any sword Kestrel had seen before, at least not in real life. She had seen swords like this one in illustrations that were supposedly copied from art from the ancient times, and those weapons were completely different from the swords she was used to seeing.

Most blade weapons of this current era were completely based on crystallic energy, which when focused through lenses and power emitters within the hilt would create an energy beam that formed into a blade-like shape that could be used in the weapon. All crystal melee weapons either could create this energy blade with an exterior frame that ran the length of what the blade was supposed to be to set the length of the blade and contain it within a controlled space, keeping it from firing off as energy would under normal circumstances. Or, as with more advanced models, the device could create the blade and contain it without any external assistance.

These old style swords however, had no such power source; they were made completely from steel and iron, forged with heat and made to stand out as thick, heavy slabs of metal sharp enough to slice through the flesh of another living being. When looking at it and thinking of the swords used today, the style of the past seemed incredibly crude and barbaric.

But this sword wasn't like anything she had read about…

The large, double-edged blade extended at least a yard out from its hilt. The blade was perfectly shaped and proportioned, with a smooth, flawless surface that gleamed with the light it emanated. It almost looked like it was made of glass or crystal, except that its surface was as smooth and shining, reflecting the images around it like a perfect mirror. The hilt was ornately designed, mainly white in color with small amounts of blue and gold adorning it like precious gems. The sword seemed to be floating blade up in the container as if in stasis, seemingly frozen in time, but while looking at the blade, Kestrel heard something in the air around her.

A melodious song filled her ears with a feeling of warmth and comfort. She could hear what sounded like a woman singing softly in the air, but it was in a language she hadn't heard before, even when reading the Ancient texts. Kestrel could hardly put the sound into words, but it was breathtakingly beautiful, as if the voice was every harmonious instrument ever invented and molded into one perfect sound. It reverberated throughout the room with a perfect ambient clarity she had never experienced before. It was what she would have imagined the wind would sound like if it could sing as people did. Yet despite the alien quality of the sound, she felt as though she had heard it before, almost as if she had heard it in a dream. It almost felt like it was a part of her, a part of everything that lived. It almost brought a tear to her eye to listen to it, but she shook herself out of her trance before being wholly enveloped in the melody.

"This…" she said to herself in a low whisper. "…is what mom left me?"

Kestrel reached out as if to touch it, but then stopped. Despite its beauty, what lay before her was still a sword, a weapon designed for ending the life on another.

…A path that Kestrel had put behind her long ago.

She had sworn to never take another sentient being's life again. Though it could not be seen, her hands were stained with blood, the blood of many people. It was more than she could ever wash clean, she knew that, but she had vowed never to stain them further. And yet this sword was placed here by her mother. Did it belong to her at one point? She couldn't remember if her mother had ever carried a sword, but such a thing was possible. But then why would she leave it here for her? Did that make her mother a taker of lives as well? And if so what did that make _her_?

Once again, it seemed her path to the truth had become even further entangled with question and mysteries than when she had begun. And once again she wasn't sure what to do. Kestrel thought long and hard about it, weighing the consequences of taking the sword from its prison. She could feel the power emanating from the weapon, flowing into her like the warmth of a hearth's flame. Maybe it could lead her to her mother again. It could be the answer she was looking for all along. The power the sword contained could give her the power to find her mother again!

But if she had to wield the blade as the weapon of a killer to do it, if she had to end the lives of others to get what she wanted, would it really be worth it? Even if she found her mother again, could she stand before her as a murderer once again? Could she be able to justify the blood she would spill as a means to an end to reach her goal?

Could she really be that type of person again?

"…No," she said finally, returning her arm to her side. "I'm sorry mom, but I…I can't. I won't become a murderer again…even to see you one more time. I just…can't…"

She felt the tears of grief welling up in her eyes over her decision. She had once again walked away from a chance at finding happiness again and her mind and body cried out in anguish. But still she remained strong and held on to her choice. She would find another way. There was always a way, even if it stretched out far beyond her sight, she would find it. She had to.

With a heavy sigh, Kestrel walked away from the sword and made her way back to the computer room. "Maybe Gyr has made some progress," she said to herself. "Wouldn't hurt to go check."

"Wow, I can't make heads of tails of this thing…" Gyr said frustrated as he continued to experiment with the machine, while still attempting to be delicate. He knew a lot more about the Ancient language than most, as he had helped Kestrel research it years ago. He had even been able to pick it up better than she could. Still, the amount of information stored in the computer was so vast and complex that the miniscule amount of Ancient he had learned was insufficient to completely decipher the machine. Even now, after about 10 minutes of fiddling with the machine he was still stuck on the map screen.

Gyr let out an aggravated growl before giving up. "Maybe I could wait for Code to come back," he thought. "He lives here, so he's got to know a lot about this th-ACK!"

Gyr felt a sharp pain in the back of his head, and then everything suddenly went black. He fell to the floor like a rock, with two figures standing over him. The one who had attacked Gyr was wearing a blue flight suit with metal armor plating on his shoulders and forearms. His hair was jet-black, short and spiked upward. He wore s sickly satisfied grin on his face as he watched Gyr fall to the ground. On his side was a slightly taller man in a completely black flight suit. The look on his face was cold and emotionless and he seemed to radiate an aura of fear and power.

"Well, that wasn't too hard," the one in blue said mockingly.

"Just hurry up and give me access to the system," the one in black spat impatiently. "I don't have all day."

"Fine, Nothing to get upset about," the man in blue went over to the computer and placed his hand on the screen. In seconds the screen blinked and returned to its original state. "There, all yours."

The man in blue moved out of the way for the man in black to take control of the computer. "So, 'Vergil.'" the man in blue asked. "What exactly are you looking for?"

"Nothing that concerns you," the man in black replied coldly, "I only agreed to work with you up to this point. I'm not interested in sharing information"

"Hmph… I suppose not…" the man in blue replied.

Suddenly, the blue clad warrior heard footsteps coming from the adjoining room.

"Well well," the one in blue said. "It seems we have a visitor."

"Deal with it." Vergil replied. "I still need to download these files."

"What the..? What's going on?" Kestrel exclaimed as she saw the scene before her; Gyr was unconscious, a strange man wearing black was now at the computer terminal, and an all too familiar figure in blue was standing over Gyr.

"Surprised to see me again?" the man in blue said smugly, and a wicked grin crept across his face.

"It can't be…" Kestrel said in a somber tone as she looked at the face of the man in blue. Her face was struck with shock and horror as she realized his identity.

"Heiro!?"

Well that's it for chapter 5, hope you enjoyed it. I'm still really frustrated it took as long as it did, even if it didn't take quite as long as the previous one. Either way I hope to bring these things out even faster soon, but I'm working on my original fiction as well so it may take me more than a week to finish the next chapter. Yes, the next chapter will finally show Hiero, Kestrel's half-brother as well as some of his abilities. As for Vergil, Archer asked that I not reveal who he is in relation to his story, but let's just say that's not the character's real name. Oh and if anyone is interested, the song that Kestrel hears when she finds the sword is based off of "Aniron" sung by Enya, so feel free to look it up if you're interested.

Laterz!


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